June 8

Belmont

The 2014 Breeders’ Cup will be held Oct. 31-Nov. 1 at Santa Anita Park near Los Angeles, Breeders’ Cup announced Monday morning, marking the third consecutive time Santa Anita will host the event and the eighth time overall.

No other track has held the event in three consecutive years.

Handle on the Belmont Stakes at Belmont Park in New York on Saturday was $52.6 million, down 6.2 percent compared with handle of $56.1 million on the race last year, according to the charts for the two races.

In addition, attendance at the track and the overnight rating for a Belmont Stakes television broadcast on Saturday were down significantly compared with last year, and there were significant declines in ontrack handle and total handle on this year’s 13-race card.

Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn late Friday afternoon signed into law a bill that allows account wagering providers to resume taking bets from Illinois residents.

Illinois account wagering has been shut down since January, when the legislature failed to renew the licenses of the state's four online bet-takers: XpressBet, TVG, Betzotic, and Twinspires.

The New York Post, one of three major dailies in the New York area, fired its racing reporters effective immediately on Friday, one day prior to the state’s biggest race, the Belmont Stakes, and the paper will no longer cover racing in-house, its lead racing reporter said.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has proposed allowing three new upstate casinos and two Western New York slot-machine parlors that would pay a far lower tax rate than the existing racetrack casinos already operating in the state, according to a plan he released on Wednesday.

The 2014 Eclipse Awards ceremony has been scheduled for Jan. 18 at Gulfstream Park in Hallandale, Fla., the National Thoroughbred Racing Association, the organizer of the ceremony, announced on Thursday.

This will be the second year in a row that the ceremony has been held at Gulfstream Park, which is owned by the Stronach Group, a sponsor of the event along with Daily Racing Form and Breeders’ Cup. The ceremony will be held in the track’s Sport of Kings Theatre, the NTRA said.

LEXINGTON, Ky. – The Kentucky Horse Racing Commission on Wednesday voted unanimously to accept a recommendation by a hearing officer to uphold a 180-day suspension issued more than two years ago to Carol Cobb, a trainer who has not started a horse since 2011.

August Belmont II and Paul Mellon, two breeders who played prominent leadership roles in the industry, have been selected to be the first two “Pillars of the Turf” to be inducted into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame, the organization announced on Wednesday.

On the final day of its spring session the Illinois legislature finally approved a bill to renew the licenses of account-wagering companies, but gambling-expansion legislation that would authorize Illinois racetracks to operate slot-machine parlors died in the House of Representatives.

The account-wagering legislation also governs the distribution of revenue collected from a casino in Des Plaines, with horseracing interests cut in for only a fraction of the money they were originally slated to receive.