Jesse “Sonny” Wigginton, a trainer for more than 40 years who regularly raced in Kentucky and Arkansas, died Wednesday morning in a hospital in Lexington, Ky., according to family members and friends. Wigginton, who had been battling Parkinson’s disease, was 78.
Funeral arrangements were just starting to be made late Wednesday, according to Wigginton’s wife, Lydia.
A former bookkeeper at Mountaineer racetrack in West Virginia was sentenced to 87 months in federal prison on Monday by a judge in U.S. District Court in Wheeling, according to court documents.
Anita Ambler, also known as Anita Webb, was convicted in April on multiple counts of mail fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering after prosecutors alleged she embezzled approximately $1.3 million from the horsemen’s account at Mountaineer between 2005 and 2010.
A jury has ruled against the American Quarter Horse Association in a cloning registration case that went to trial in Amarillo, Texas, on July 17. The AQHA prohibits the registration of cloned animals in a practice that was legally challenged by Jason Abraham and Gregg Veneklasen. The suit alleged violation of anti-trust laws. There were no damages awarded in the case, according to a statement on the website of the AQHA.
A 10-person jury in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas ruled on the case Tuesday. A decision whether it will be appealed is forthcoming.
Battleship: A Daring Heiress, A Teenage Jockey, and America’s Horse
By Dorothy Ours
St. Martin's Press
Hardcover, 360 pages, $26.99
Movie director Dave Butler liked horse racing, a fact reflected in his film-ography, which included Oscar-winning “Kentucky” in 1938 and 1949’s “The Story of Seabiscuit” Yet, when approached to oversee a project about Man o’ War, he respectfully declined.
See the questions HERE.
1. Roseben was nicknamed “The Big Train,” not only because of his enormous size (just one inch shy of 18 hands), but because of his remarkable ability to consistently shoulder the highest weights ever assigned to a racehorse.
In his 111-start career, Roseben won shouldering 147 pounds on four occasions. In the two times he was asked to carry 150 pounds, he finished second.
When this year’s Hall of Fame ceremony concludes Friday, Aug. 9, in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., the number of horses enshrined since the Hall’s inception in 1955 will be just shy of 200.
One of this year's inductees is Housebuster, who shares a distinction only a handful of inductees can claim – their success on the track came primarily in sprints.
Eclipse Award winner as the nation’s top sprinter in 1990 and 1991, Housebuster did win four stakes at a flat mile, but each of those was around only one turn.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.,Y. - Oxbow, the Preakness winner who finished fourth in Sunday’s Grade 1 Haskell Invitational at Monmouth Park, was found to have a wrenched right ankle, according to trainer D. Wayne Lukas.
The injury puts his status for the $1 million Travers Stakes on Aug. 24 in doubt, though Lukas said he “is not ruling out anything.”
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G.R. Carter Jr. has been named the recipient of the Sam Thompson Memorial Jockey Award, presented annually to a Quarter Horse jockey for his character on and off the racetrack.
The award honors the memory of the rider who died at age 36 from injuries suffered in a spill at Los Alamitos in December 2008.
The Thompson award winner is selected by a vote of Quarter Horse jockeys nationwide and is administered by Speedhorse magazine in conjunction with the Jockeys’ Guild. The award is patterned after the George Woolf Memorial Jockey Award, presented annually at Santa Anita.
