Voters in an online poll have selected Drosselmeyer’s victory over Game On Dude in the 2011 Breeders’ Cup Classic as the National Thoroughbred Racing Association “Moment of the Year,” the NTRA announced on Friday.

The New York Racing Association enjoyed tremendous gains in ontrack business in 2011, but all-sources handle on racing at its three tracks – Aqueduct, Belmont and Saratoga – was down 7.3 percent compared with 2010.

Ontrack handle on NYRA’s races was $351,835,640, an increase of 26.7 percent from 2010 when $277,696,682 was wagered ontrack. Included in NYRA’s ontrack figures is money wagered at both the Belmont Café and Aqueduct while live racing is not operating at those tracks, as well as money wagered through NYRA Rewards.

The Stronach Group, the private company formed from the gambling assets of MI Developments, will sponsor the Eclipse Awards ceremony for the next two years, including this year, the event’s administrators announced on Thursday.

As part of the sponsorship agreement, the Eclipse Awards ceremony in 2013 will be held at Gulfstream Park, the Hallandale, Fla., track owned by the Stronach Group. The track’s grandstand includes a theater designed to host events.

A reporter for ESPN since 1995, she has been part of three broadcast teams that have won Eclipse Awards for horse racing coverage. She will host the 41st annual Eclipse Awards dinner Monday night in Beverly Hills, Calif.

Birthdate: March 12, 1964, in Tenafly, N.J.

Family: divorced

You can call Paul Shurman the reluctant bonus baby. Or the accidental treasure hunter.

When the 13th annual Daily Racing Form/NTRA National Handicapping Championship takes place at the Treasure Island Hotel and Casino on Jan. 27-28, Shurman will be one of 484 horseplayers shooting for the record $1 million first-place prize and the title of 2011 Handicapper of the Year.

As winner of the season-long NHC Tour points title, however, he will be the only player eligible for a $2 million bonus, which he will win if he can pull off the double at the NHC finals.

Thomas Kennedy Jr., winner of the Purple Heart during World War II and a horse owner on the Maryland and Delaware circuits for nearly 50 years, died Jan. 6. He was 86.

Among Kennedy’s horses were the stakes winners Da’s Baby and For Love and Glory.

Meet the three new finalists for the 2011 Eclipse Award for Apprentice Jockey. Same as the old three.

Five days after the voting results for champion apprentice jockey were thrown out because of an error in the statistics distributed to voters, the same three finalists were announced on Wednesday as a result of new voting conducted Monday and Tuesday. The three finalists, in alphabetical order, are Ryan Curatolo, Kyle Frey, and Rosario Montanez.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo sent a letter Tuesday afternoon to the state’s legislative leaders urging them to consider a plan to expand gambling at a casino at Aqueduct and accept a proposal from the casino’s operator to build a convention center at the track.

The letter asked Senate Majority Leader Dean G. Skelos and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver to meet “in the coming weeks” with representatives of his office and of Genting, the Malaysian company that was selected by the state to build and operate the Aqueduct casino in 2010.

The Kentucky House Speaker introduced a bill on Monday that would impose a 0.5-percent tax on bets made by Kentucky residents through account-wagering companies.

The New Jersey legislature on Monday night passed a bill authorizing offtrack betting in as many as 12 bars or restaurants in the state, a measure that was supported by racing interests as a low-cost expansion of the state’s limited offtrack betting network.