Florida regulators on Friday rubber-stamped the dates applications for Calder Race Course and Gulfstream Park, approving both tracks’ requests to begin racing year-round as of July 1.
Calder was approved for a total of 158 live racing dates, running three days a week, Friday through Sunday, from July 1 to June 30, 2014.
Breeders’ Cup will provide travel allowances to all horses based outside of California for this year’s event and reduce the entry fee for its 14 races from 3 percent of the total purse to 2 percent, the organization announced Friday.
An Ohio appeals court on Thursday struck down a challenge to a directive issued by Gov. John Kasich authorizing slot machines at the state’s racetracks, ruling that the anti-gambling group that sued did not have standing and cannot proceed.
The unanimous ruling, which upheld a lower court’s ruling, is a major setback to the Ohio Roundtable, a group of anti-gambling advocates that sued the state after Kasich issued the directive in 2011. The group contended that the state could not authorize an expansion of gambling without putting the issue to voters.
The New York Racing Association plans to hold a forum for racing fans in late May at Belmont Park to solicit comments and feedback about the association’s customer service and its racing policies, track officials said on Thursday.
NYRA will ask visitors to its website to submit questions and comments prior to the meeting, according to Rodnell Workman, NYRA’s chief marketing officer. The meeting will last approximately one hour, Workman said during a conference call with members of NYRA’s Public Hearings and Communications Committee on Thursday afternoon.
The trainer of the Horse of the Year for three straight years − Curlin in 2007-08 and Rachel Alexandra in 2009 − Asmussen is on pace to soon pass Jack Van Berg as the second-winningest trainer in North American racing history. For years, he has maintained several strings at once, with his best horses typically stabled at Churchill Downs in the spring and fall, Saratoga in the summer, and Fair Grounds and Santa Anita in the winter. He began training in 1986 after a few years as a jockey and won the Eclipse Award as top trainer in 2008 and 2009.
Kentucky Off-Track Betting, a corporation owned by the state’s racetracks, will close its three remaining facilities after the Triple Crown concludes this year in June, the company announced on Thursday.
Handle at the sites has declined precipitously over the past 10 years as horseplayers increasingly began to favor in-home betting through account-wagering operations. In 2003, handle at the company’s four sites totaled nearly $26 million, while last year handle at the three remaining sites was $10 million, according to the company.
Not since Curlin spent six weeks in Dubai in February and March 2008 had a United States-based horse traveled early to the Middle East to run in a prep race for the Dubai World Cup. But Saturday, March 9, two such runners competed at Meydan Race Course. The circumstances might have been unusual, but the results were not: Just like 22 of the previous 23 American shippers to race in Dubai since Meydan replaced Nad Al Sheba in 2010 as the site of Dubai’s major racing events, Little Mike and Dullahan lost.
The Kentucky Horse Racing Commission on Wednesday voted unanimously to accept a hearing officer’s recommendation affirming its decision two years ago to deny a license to the banned trainer Richard Dutrow Jr.
The vote was conducted nearly two months after Dutrow began serving a 10-year suspension that has sent the trainer to the sidelines as he conducts an unlikely appeal of the penalty through the federal courts. Still, the vote could pose problems to Dutrow if he is reinstated and seeks a license in Kentucky sometime in the future.
