A memorial for popular trainer Armando Lage will be held Saturday at 11 a.m. at Golden Gate Fields. There will also be a remembrance for Lage following one of the races.
Lage, 59, died Monday night after suffering a heart attack.
Lage’s runners won 1,259 races after his arrival in the United States from his native Mexico, with the final victory coming the day before his death when favored Cherokee In Me scored a 3 1/4-length win in a $20,000 claiming race in Sunday’s final race.
Classic Empire, the winner of the 2016 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile and last year’s 2-year-old male champion, was assigned 126 pounds to top the annual Experimental Free Handicap, a ranking of the top juveniles to run in North America last year.
Classic Empire, by Pioneerof the Nile, was rated one pound higher than Not This Time, the second-place finisher in the Juvenile who was retired last year after sustaining a soft-tissue injury. Oscar Performance, the first-place finisher in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf, was assigned 123 pounds.
Last month, the New Vocations Thoroughbred retraining and adoption organization opened its New York satellite facility at Dan and Danielle Dill’s October Hill Farm in Fort Edward. Trainer Leandra Cooper will spearhead the retraining and adoption processes for horses housed at the farm, about 30 minutes northeast of Saratoga Springs.
Arapahoe Park in Aurora, Colo., will race 39 dates in 2017, from May 19 to Aug. 13. Hank Demoney will be the new racing secretary. He most recently served as a steward at Arapahoe.
Arapahoe will race Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. There will be a Monday program May 29.
The Gold Rush Futurity, traditionally the meet’s richest race for Thoroughbreds, will be run Aug. 13. The complete stakes schedule will be available in late February.
Equibase Co., the racing industry’s official data collector and supplier, will no longer release handle and purse figures on a monthly basis, the company said on Wednesday, citing “significant fluctuations” in the data when comparing the figures on a year-to-year basis.
Instead, Equibase will release the figures quarterly, the company said. In addition to purse and handle figures, the Equibase data include number of races, race days, and starts at U.S. tracks, along with average field size.
Evangeline Downs in Opelousas, La., has started construction on a 70-stall receiving barn that is scheduled to be operational in advance of the meet that opens April 12. The track also is making upgrades to its turf course as part of improvement projects for the 84-date meet that runs through Sept. 2.
Evangeline’s new barn will increase stall space at the track to 1,000 horses, said Chris Warren, director of racing for Evangeline.
“The framework is going up,” Warren said of the new barn. “The plan is to be done by the end of March.”
The Association of Racing Commissioners International has named three former racing regulators to its newly formed Integrity Compliance Certification panel, a committee that is expected to grade racing states on conformity to uniform recommendations of the organization, the ARCI announced on Wednesday.
Four of five nasal-swab samples taken from horses currently isolated at Fair Grounds because of the equine herpesvirus returned negative results from a lab in Kentucky after testing positive for the wild strain of EHV-1 at a Louisiana lab.
ARCADIA, Calif. - Jockey Drayden Van Dyke remained hospitalized over the weekend after breaking his right forearm in a spill at Santa Anita last Thursday. On Sunday, it was unclear how long he will be away from riding.
Van Dyke was injured when his mount broke down while racing on the lead. Van Dyke, 22, was the champion apprentice jockey of 2014.
ARCADIA, Calif. - Two horses that finished fifth in consecutive races at Del Mar last August have tested positive for the prohibited substances, Sildenafil, more commonly known under the trade name Viagra, and the anti-inflamatory Dexamethasone.
The positives were found in post-race tests taken from Iancol, who was fifth in the third race on Aug. 12, and Shakeitupbetty, who was fifth in the fourth race the same day.
