Charles Town canceled its nine-race card for Tuesday night because the West Virginia track was expected to see extremely cold weather. The low temperature Tuesday night is expected to be just 7 degrees, according to The Weather Channel.
The track said it will remain open for simulcasting, with live racing resuming Wednesday with a nine-race card beginning at 7:15 p.m. Eastern.
Sunday’s last race at Aqueduct was canceled when a tractor broke down on the track and couldn’t be removed before sunset.
The cancellation forced the New York Racing Association to refunds wagers placed on the ninth race - win, place, show, exacta, trifecta, superfecta, and trifecta - totaling $790,043.
It also resulted in a scenario regarding the pick six in which only the money wagered on Sunday ($94,546) - and not the $24,569 carryover from Saturday’s card – was paid out.
A memorial service will be held Friday in Fresno for former trainer Eldwin ‘Tex’ Burch, 78, who died of pancreatic cancer on Dec. 18 in his home in Fresno.
The service will be at 2 p.m. at the Chapel of the Light, 1620 W. Belmont, Fresno.
Burch, who also enjoyed success with roping and cutting horses, trained and raced horses in Northern California for 47 years at Golden Gate Fields, Bay Meadows and the fair circuit. His wife, Audrey, was his assistant.
It will be the long goodbye, as Beulah Park begins its final meet in its longtime home in suburban Columbus, Ohio, on Monday. Built in 1923 as the first track in the state, Beulah will be ending its association with Grove City when it moves later this year into sparkling new digs in a $125 million racino in Austintown, a suburb of Youngstown in the northeastern sector of the state.
The new facility, scheduled to open for racing in November, is part of a sweeping movement in Ohio following legislation that approves slots at racetracks.
ELMONT, N.Y. – Caixa Eletronica, a popular graded stakes winner, and Six Drivers, a maiden, suffered fatal injuries when the two horses collided head-on during training hours Saturday morning at Belmont Park.
Six Drivers had unseated his rider, Julio Pezua, near the starting gate on the training track, and went running loose the opposite, or wrong way, when he barreled into Caixa Eletronica, who was galloping near the five-furlong marker.
Will Take Charge, the front-runner for champion 3-year-old of 2013, remains in steady training at Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs, Ark., with the early-season races on his radar the Donn at Gulfstream and the Santa Anita Handicap, according to his trainer, D. Wayne Lukas.
Will Take Charge has logged three works at Oaklawn since arriving at the track the latter half of December. His most recent move was a five-furlong breeze in 1:03.20 on Thursday. His previous breezes were half-mile works, on Dec. 18 and Dec. 26.
CLASSIC GIACNROLL earned the Jerome’s top Beyer Speed Figure when a rallying third traveling seven furlongs in the mud Dec. 7. After saving ground at the back of the pack for the first half-mile, Classic Giacnroll advanced while widest turning for home and finished well to be third.
Per day wagering on live races at Laurel Park and Pimlico Race Course in Maryland was up 4 percent in 2013 compared with live handle in 2012, according to figures released by the parent company of the tracks on Friday.
Average handle was $2.06 million, according to the figures, up from $1.97 million in 2012. There were 145 live racing days each year.
Hollywood Park had increases in ontrack attendance and daily all-sources handle for its final live meeting, which ended Dec. 22, the track announced Thursday.
The track is scheduled to be demolished in 2014 for commercial and residential development.
The track released limited data Thursday. Average daily all-sources handle on live racing and simulcasts rose slightly, from $8,897,626 in 2012 to $8,935,076 in 2013. All-sources handle on Hollywood Park races rose 4 percent, from $6,604,176 in 2012 to $6,864,028 in 2013.
Delta Downs canceled its racing program Thursday night after a backup generator stopped working.
The generator is designed to automatically switch on if the main power supply for the lights illuminating the track surface fails. The lack of backup power was considered a potential safety hazard, and led to the decision to abandon racing.
The generator failure, a Delta official said, was being repaired Friday morning and the track was hopeful of conducting its Friday night card as scheduled.
