CHICAGO – The Illinois Racing Board declined to issue a 2020 Illinois racing schedule during its annual dates award meeting Tuesday, voting unanimously to reconvene Tuesday, Sept. 24 after giving Churchill Downs Inc. an opportunity to reconsider the possibility of turning Arlington International Racecourse into a racino.

CDI in late August announced it wouldn’t apply for a license to operate a casino at Arlington despite having sought such a chance for years, and the IRB, with commissioner Thomas McCauley at the vanguard, came down hard on that position.

Braulio Baeza Jr., the current New York Racing Association steward, has been cleared by the New York Gaming Commission to take the state steward's job at NYRA's three tracks.

The gambling commission cleared the way for Baeza to be the new state steward at a meeting on Tuesday. Baeza will replace Stephen Lewandowski, who retired in June and whose seat has been filled by either Carmine Donofrio or Erinn Higgins since then.

Mike Lakow, who was hired as racing secretary at Saratoga and Aqueduct in New York last year, has taken a position to run the racing operations at Gulfstream Park in Hallandale Beach, Fla., according to the owner of the track, The Stronach Group.

Lakow, who has held a variety of positions in the racing industry, will replace Bill Badgett in the position of vice president of racing operations at Gulfstream. Badgett, a former trainer, recently took a position at the Florida Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association, The Stronach Group said.

LEXINGTON, Ky. – Craig Fravel, the president and chief executive of the Breeders’ Cup since 2011, will leave the organization after the company’s two-day event this year in November and join The Stronach Group in the newly created position of CEO, racing operations, the two companies announced on Friday.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Monomoy Girl, the 3-year-old champion filly of 2018, will not make the Breeders’ Cup because of a minor setback but will race in 2020 as a 5-year-old, according to bloodstock agent Liz Crow, who helps to manage the filly’s ownership group.

Based at Churchill Downs with trainer Brad Cox, Monomoy Girl is getting about 10 days off after suffering a slight pull in a gluteal muscle in her latest workout Saturday.

LEXINGTON, Ky. – Churchill Downs in Louisville has applied for the winter racing dates currently held by Turfway Park, the company announced Thursday night, a proposal that could upend the Kentucky racing circuit and lead to a new track in northern Kentucky.

Rick Violette, the late trainer and horsemen’s advocate, has been selected to receive the Joe Palmer Award for “meritorious service to racing” by the National Turf Writers and Broadcasters, the organization announced on Thursday.

Violette, who died last year at the age of 65 after a long illness, will be honored along with D. Wayne Lukas, the Hall of Fame trainer; Tim Wilkin, the longtime racing reporter for the Albany Times Union; and Caton Bredar, the racing broadcaster, the NTWAB said.

CHICAGO – Hawthorne Racecourse and Fairmount Park applied Monday for the maximum number of slot machines and table games granted them under gambling-expansion legislation signed into law this summer, but Churchill Downs Inc., parent company of Arlington International Racecourse, announced in a Wednesday morning press release that it had declined to apply for a casino license.

A racing medication advisory group has approved recommendations that would limit the use of a class of drugs called bisphosphonates to horses that are at least four years old and that would restrict the use of any non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug to at least 48 hours prior to a race, according to the group, the Racing Medication and Testing Consortium.

Bobby Lillis, executive director of the Maryland Horsemen’s Assistance Foundation and director of benefits for the Maryland Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association, has been named as the winner of the Thoroughbred Industry Community Award, it was announced Friday. Finalists in the other six divisions of the North American Thoroughbred Industry Employee Awards were named.