A freak accident involving a loose horse at Churchill Downs before dawn Sept. 29 resulted in injuries to three men. Rob Pearson, an owner who has horses with Forrest Kaelin, sustained a broken sternum, six fractured ribs, and a collapsed lung when a 7-year-old horse named Dream Seeker came running at full speed toward the six-furlong gap and hurtled over a partition, toppling him and the other two men.

“We had no shot to get out of the way,” said trainer Scooter Dickey, who broke a rib. “He came at us 40 miles an hour in the dark.”

Betting on races at U.S. tracks rose 2.4 percent in September from the same month last year, while purses distributed at U.S. tracks fell 6.5 percent, according to figures distributed Wednesday by Equibase.

Betting rose from $776.1 million last September to $795.0 million this year, according to the figures. In both years, September had eight weekend dates. The number of weekend dates in a month can significantly affect handle.

Daily Racing Form on Friday will stream the ceremony that announces the winners of the inaugural Thoroughbred Industry Employee Awards, presented by Godolphin. Held at Keeneland, the event starts at 11 a.m. Eastern, and the five winners will each receive a trophy and a check for $10,000.

The 2017 Kentucky racing calendar will look much the same as it did in 2016 under an agreement reached by the major Thoroughbred tracks in the state.

With Hurricane Matthew expected to strike the area, Gulfstream Park West has canceled racing Wednesday through Friday, the track announced Tuesday.

Hurricane watches and warnings were posted for parts of South Florida Tuesday morning and Florida was placed under a state of emergency.

Gulfstream Park will be open for simulcasting Wednesday.

Gulfstream Park officials have decided to allow Allan Hunter to continue to train 12 horses at the Florida track following a probe into whether a suspended trainer was overseeing his operation, a top official of the track said Monday.

Hunter, who has been linked to the suspended trainer Marcus Vitali, was required to disperse approximately 20 horses to other trainers as a result of the probe, which was led by Gulfstream general manager P. J. Campo. Those horses were dispersed to trainers in states outside of Florida, Campo said.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – All-sources handle at the 11-day September meet that ended Sunday at Churchill Downs was up 1 percent over the comparable meet in 2015, according to figures released Monday by the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission.

Gross handle was $33,611,462, up marginally over the $33,217,607 handled last year, when 11 days also were run. Per-day handle at the 2015 meet was down nearly 7 percent from 2014, when 12 dates were held. The first year for a September meet at Churchill was 2013.

Suffolk Downs in East Boston, Mass., has asked the state’s racing commission for approval to hold six live racing dates in 2017, along the same lines of the meet the track held this year.

Materiality, the winner of the Grade 1 Florida Derby in 2015, was euthanized in July due to complications from laminitis, according to Steve Young, racing manager for Alto Racing, which owned the colt.

Materiality, trained by Todd Pletcher, had been retired in July 2015 after coming out of a workout at Saratoga with a physical issue. He was vanned to Lexington, Ky., and ultimately spent several months at the Rood and Riddle Equine Hospital, where he was being treated for laminitis.

The New York Racing Association was fined $150,000 and agreed to implement several changes in waste management protocols after it was deemed to have discharged polluted wastewater from Aqueduct into nearby Jamaica Bay.