The first step toward live racing coming to West Texas in October 2014 will take place Friday, when the yet-to-be-constructed Saddle Brook Park opens a simulcast facility in Amarillo, Texas. The parlor will launch at 11 a.m., with 19 tracks available including Aqueduct, Betfair Hollywood Park, Gulfstream Park, and Fair Grounds.

It's Time to Cast Your Vote

Cast your Fan Vote for the next Horse of the Year! The awards ceremony will take place on Jan. 19, 2013, at Gulfstream Park in Hallandale Beach, Fla.
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He began the year as down-and-out veteran jockey Ronnie Jenkins on the short-lived HBO series “Luck” and had plenty on his plate the rest of the year with his television responsibilities for NBC and HRTV, but in recent weeks, Gary Stevens decided he needed to get fit, so he has sequestered himself in Washington state, where he has been working out, and, on Friday, breezed horses at the Pegasus Training and Equine Rehabilitation Center.

As we head toward the finish line for 2012, it's time to look back on the year in horse racing. Cast your vote below on some of the biggest races and storylines of the year, and look for the poll results in the Dec. 29 edition of DRF Weekend. Vote by 5 p.m. Eastern on Friday, Dec. 21, to be included in the published results. Be sure to share the poll on Facebook and Twitter, and let us know in the comments why you voted the way you did.

Castleton Lyons will again sponsor the Dr. Tony Ryan Book Award, a competition recognizing excellence in writing in the Thoroughbred industry, and entries are now being taken for the seventh annual award. The award, which comes with a $10,000 winner’s prize and a Tipperary Crystal trophy, is named for the late Castleton Lyons owner Dr. Tony Ryan, whose twin passions for great writing and quality horse racing led to his launch of the competition in 2006. The award had been co-sponsored with Thoroughbred Times since its inception through last year.

I know the Lasix debate has become tiresome, and I apologize, but I couldn’t sit idle after reading Mark Simon’s piece on the subject (“Deconstructing the ban: The sky didn’t fall,” DRF Weekend, Nov. 10). Mr. Simon is entitled to his own opinion, but he is not entitled to his own facts.

Brian Hernandez Jr. rode Cash Refund the first eight starts of the speedy gelding’s career in 2009 and 2010, winning five races, two of them stakes. But when Cash Refund’s connections decided to try the 2010 Breeders’ Cup Sprint, Hernandez was replaced with John Velazquez. What would have been Hernandez’s first Breeders’ Cup mount turned instead into a lost opportunity.

“I thought I’d get to ride him,” Hernandez said. “They decided he needed a Breeders’ Cup rider.”

TUCSON, Ariz. – Dale Romans, trainer of Breeders’ Cup Turf winner Little Mike, was presented with the Big Sport of Turfdom Award on Wednesday at a luncheon held during the University of Arizona Global Symposium on Racing and Gaming.

The award, presented by the Turf Publicists of America, is given to an individual who has worked with publicists and the media to promote the sport. In an acceptance speech, Romans said that he was honored to receive the award, citing the other individuals who had received it before him.

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