Funeral services for Walter L. “Buddy” New Jr. are scheduled for Friday in Austin, Tex., at the Weed-Corley-Fish Funeral Home. New, who owned horses for nearly 25 years, died March 8 in La Jolla, Calif., after a long illness. He was 70.

New was a partner in two Kentucky Derby starters, Southern Rhythm (7th in 1994) and Blow Out (7th in 1996), and was the sole owner of Lone Star Sky, 15th in the 2003 Derby. New also campaigned Forty One Carats, a multiple Grade 2 winner whose victories included the Smile, Pegasus, and Indiana Derby.

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – The Claiming Crown will move to south Florida for the first time this season, with the 14th renewal of the event to be held at Gulfstream Park on Dec. 1, opening day of the 2012-2013 meeting.

This year’s event will feature a significant increase in total purses, with $850,000 to be offered on the Claiming Crown’s seven races. Only six Claiming Crown races were offered in 2011, and only five filled with total purses of $425,000, when the event was held at Fair Grounds.

Dottie Ingordo-Shirreffs, author of Zenyatta’s “diary” at Zenyatta.com, will put the blog on hiatus after the March 13 post.

Ann and Jerry Moss’s popular 8-year-old mare gave birth to her first foal, a 130-pound Bernardini colt, on March 8. Ingordo-Shirreffs, the Mosses’ racing manager and wife of Zenyatta’s trainer John Shirreffs, said she’s decided to end the diary “because it was full circle of her being a foal and now having a foal.”

Animal Kingdom was sent to Palm Beach Equine Medical Center on Tuesday to undergo a bone scan to determine the extent of the injury that has forced him out of the $10 million Dubai World Cup. Trainer Graham Motion said the results of the exam would probably not be available until late Tuesday or Wednesday morning.

ARCADIA, Calif. – Creative Cause and Bodemeister, the one-two finishers in the San Felipe Stakes on Saturday at Santa Anita, are expected to meet again in the Grade 1, $750,000 Santa Anita Derby on April 7, but that race will not include Fed Biz, who on Monday was pulled from the Kentucky Derby trail by his trainer, Bob Baffert.

Fed Biz missed the San Felipe with a hind-end issue, and is still not moving to Baffert’s satisfaction. So, he is out of the running for the May 5 Kentucky Derby.

For many connections of lightly-raced 3-year-olds, the strains of “My Old Kentucky Home,” played during the Kentucky Derby post parade on the first Saturday in May, are nothing more than a siren song.

“Derby Fever” is contagious during the opening months of the racing season and many promising youngsters are rushed onto the Triple Crown trail before they are ready.

Fed Biz, who missed the San Felipe Stakes on Saturday at Santa Anita with a hind-end issue, is still not traveling properly and will be pulled off the trail to the May 5 Kentucky Derby, his trainer, Bob Baffert, said Monday.

"I'm taking him off the Derby trail,” Baffert said from Ocala, Fla., where he is attending the 2-year-old sale. "I took him back to the track, and he's still not comfortable. I'm going to stop on him. He's got a hind-end issue. We can't find it, but something's nagging him. I'm going to give him some time off."

The New Jersey Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association is in discussions with potential partners for the development of property surrounding Monmouth Park, according to the horsemen’s chief negotiator and legal counsel.

Kentucky Derby winner Animal Kingdom will not compete as planned in the $10 million Dubai World Cup, trainer Graham Motion said on Monday.

Connections should give Caleb's Posse shot at top honor

From reading trainer Donnie Von Hemel's remark "We will be interested in mostly one-turn races this year," in the Feb. 12 article "Caleb's Posse headed to New York," and more recently "There are plenty of races at seven and a mile," in the March 7 "Caleb's Posse points to rematch" after his sharp second-place finish in the Tom Fool, one reaches the conclusion that the horse's connections consider him nothing more than a miler, and that he will be restricted to that distance limitation.