A Los Angeles Superior Court judge ruled on Thursday that Los Alamitos Race Course was in violation of state law when it denied owner Gustavo de la Torre the right to run Runaway Fire in the $175,100 El Primero Del Ano Derby for Quarter Horses last April.
Los Alamitos implemented a house rule in late 2014 stating that all finalists for major stakes would undergo hair-follicle testing for clenbuterol. At the time, the track enacted a zero-tolerance policy for the use of clenbuterol.
Presque Isle Downs in northwest Pennsylvania will present the same 12 stakes during its 2016 season as it did last year. But six of the events formerly worth $75,000 got purse boosts, making every stakes the track offers worth at least $100,000.
Five stakes for Pennsylvania-breds, along with the Fitz Dixon Jr. Memorial Juvenile, received a purse increase of $25,000 apiece on the stakes schedule worth a cumulative $1.6 million released Friday.
DerbyWars, the Louisville, Ky.-based company that offers daily fantasy contests on horse races, has reached an agreement with Hawthorne Race Course near Chicago that will pay the track a fee for contests that include Hawthorne’s races, according to officials.
NEW YORK – Total all-sources handle on races run at New York Racing Association tracks in 2015 was $2,243,039,376, a 3 percent increase from 2014, when $2,177,979,073 was bet, NYRA announced Thursday.
There were 237 cards of racing conducted at NYRA tracks in 2015, eight fewer than in 2014, mostly due to a harsh winter that saw 16 full-card cancellations in the first three months of 2015.
The board of the New York Racing Association on Thursday approved a resolution to support federal legislation that would appoint a private, nonprofit company as the overseer of the sport’s medication policies, becoming the second major Thoroughbred racetrack operator to endorse the controversial bill.
Churchill Downs Inc. and its ticketing provider, Ticketmaster, will create an Internet resale exchange this year for ticketholders to the Kentucky Derby and Kentucky Oaks, the two companies announced on Thursday.
The resale exchange will provide Churchill Downs with a platform to compete with independent resellers and profit from the resale of Derby and Oaks tickets. Churchill has long complained about the unauthorized resale of Derby tickets, which are the most sought-after of any racing event in the U.S.
The Maryland Jockey Club offtrack betting parlor at the Horseshoe Casino in downtown Baltimore, which opened in 2015, was estimated to handle $10 million a year. It has exceeded expectations, and Sal Sinatra, general manager of the Maryland Jockey Club, now expects it to handle $12 million to $13 million a year.
During Laurel Park’s winter break, Sinatra has focused on two OTBs under development, one on the fairgrounds of the Maryland State Fair in Timonium and the other in Boonsboro, approximately 65 miles northwest of Baltimore.
Ernie Myers, a star of radio in the San Diego area for decades who also called races and hosted Del Mar’s simulcast show, died of Parkinson’s disease on Tuesday at his San Diego-area home, the track announced. He was 86.
Myers, blessed with a silky-smooth voice, was a top radio disc jockey in San Diego for nearly four decades while working for the biggest stations in town, his talents ranging from big band music to rock ’n’ roll to talk radio. He frequently had the No. 1-rated morning show in town.
The Grade 3, $800,000 Sunland Park Derby and the $200,000 Sunland Park Oaks have been replaced on the March 20 card with the $415,000 Sunland Park Festival of Racing Stakes and the $200,000 Plum Pretty, according to a revised stakes schedule the track provided to Daily Racing Form. The changes need the approval of the New Mexico Racing Commission at its next meeting March 17.
