An appeal by trainer Marcus Vitali of a one-year suspension handed down by the Delaware Park stewards was postponed from Wednesday until Sept. 4 after the trainer’s attorney requested the delay, according to officials with the Delaware Thoroughbred Racing Commission, which will hear the appeal.

Churchill Downs officials on Thursday released the complete qualifying-points schedules toward the 2020 Kentucky Derby and Oaks with no changes from what has become traditional.

The Road to the Kentucky Derby once again consists of 35 races in the United States, with points awarded on a sliding scale in accordance to the relative importance of the prep races. Nineteen of those races are run as “prep season,” with most of them worth 10 points to the winner, while more meaningful races comprise the later “championship season,” with the winner getting 50 or 100 points. 

The University of Louisville's Equine Industry Program will examine topics including racetrack surfaces and sports betting during a free series of lectures this fall.

“It is important for our program to be a leader in bringing stakeholders together for open dialogues addressing the matters that affect our industry,” program director Sean Beirne said in a press release announcing the series. “Our goal is to bring experts to campus in a fun and engaging platform to educate our students, industry participants, and the general public about topical issues.”

Ken Rudulph, one of the original members of TVG’s broadcast team, and Matt Bernier, a former handicapper for Daily Racing Form, have been hired to team up for the network’s “Morning Line” studio show, TVG announced on Thursday.

Rudulph, who was an anchor at TVG from the network’s launch in 1999 until 2011, will serve as the host of Morning Line, while Bernier will appear as a handicapper. The program appears prior to the start of the race cards for tracks on the East Coast on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

A high-profile Massachusetts developer has floated a proposal for a casino in the southeastern corner of the state that would also include a one-mile Thoroughbred track, but the project faces significant hurdles.

The Jockey Club has elected six new members, including Gary Barber, who owns a number of horses running in the top classes of racing.

Barber, the chief executive officer of Spyglass Media Group, a film production company, is a native of South Africa who campaigns War of Will, this year’s Preakness winner, and Got Stormy, the winner of the Grade 1 Fourstardave Handicap. He is a former chairman of Metro-Goldwyn Mayer.

The other newly elected members are Shannon Bishop Arvin, Terry Finley, Pope McLean Jr., Jaime Roth, and Chuck Winner.

Mountaineer Park in West Chester, W.Va., canceled its race card after four races had been run on Wednesday night due to reports of an active shooter in a town nearby.

Local news stations had reported that police issued an “active shooter” alert around 8 p.m., after a resident of Hancock County had been shot about seven miles away from the track.

Mountaineer Park ran its fourth race at 8:10 p.m., and then canceled the remainder of the card after police issued a warning for residents to stay indoors.

An analysis of potential sites for a new casino in Chicago has concluded that tax rates contained in the casino’s enabling legislation would likely make the casino financially unfeasible to private companies, introducing the possibility that the casino may not be built without additional legislation.

The New York Franchise Oversight Board on Tuesday approved a handful of resolutions related to a project to build a hockey arena for the New York Islanders on a parcel of the Belmont Park property, clearing the way for ground-breaking.

A cache of hypodermic needles and injectable substances found in the Monmouth Park barn of the now-suspended trainer Aparna Battula was placed there by a disgruntled employee who had been fired the day prior to the discovery, the attorney for the trainer said on Tuesday.