Victor Espinoza, who won the Triple Crown last year with American Pharoah and who has donated generously to charities such as City of Hope for years, was announced Wednesday by Santa Anita as the winner of the 2016 George Woolf Memorial Jockey Award, presented annually at Santa Anita to a rider who brings credit to the sport both on and off the track.

Eclipse Award-winning turf writer Jennie Rees will serve as the director of publicity for Kentucky Downs for 2016, the track announced Wednesday.

Rees, who left the Courier-Journal of Louisville in November 2015 after more than 34 years with the newspaper, will lead the promotion of racing at Kentucky Downs.

“I greatly look forward to joining the team to help this unique track get the exposure and attention,” Rees said in press release issued from the track.

The Maryland Racing Commission on Monday approved a plan for a new off-track betting parlor at the Timonium Fairgrounds in Baltimore County despite vows from Baltimore and county officials to block the facility.

The plan, which was submitted by the Maryland Jockey Club, the owner of Laurel Park, Pimlico Race Course, and three other OTBs in the state, calls for year-round simulcasting on the second-floor of the existing grandstands at Timonium, which annually holds a 10-day summer race meet. The racing commission said it approved the plan by a 7-0 vote on Monday.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – The stewards on Sunday fined jockey Cornelio Velasquez $1,000 for failure to ride in a professional manner in the fifth race Feb. 15. Velasquez did not maintain a straight course in the stretch on Congrats Kids, the eventual runner-up, who came over on Sky High Skylar, who finished third. The stewards, who had previously warned Velasquez about failing to maintain a straight course, did not take any action in the race.

ARCADIA, Calif. – Santa Anita will replace its turf course with a Bermuda grass surface this summer in advance of an autumn meeting highlighted by the Breeders’ Cup races on Nov. 4-5, track senior vice president Joe Morris said on Sunday.

The transition is scheduled to begin in July following the conclusion of the spring-summer meeting July 10. The track’s autumn meeting starts Sept. 29.

Morris said meetings are taking place this month to organize the change.

“We’ll probably look at laying down some Bermuda,” Morris said. “We’re meeting this week on what we’ll do.”

Keeneland Racecourse in Lexington, Ky., and Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens, N.Y., plan to offer a pick four on April 9 that will link the tracks’ biggest Kentucky Derby prep races.

The pick four, which was approved by the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission on Friday, will include the Blue Grass Stakes and Ashland Stakes at Keeneland plus the Wood Memorial and another stakes race at Aqueduct that day. The bet will be hosted by Keeneland, so takeout for the pick four wager will be 19 percent.

A former racing-office employee at Penn National in Grantville, Pa., has been sentenced to four months in federal prison for accepting money and gifts in exchange for information on the identity of horses entered in the track’s races, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania.

A tax break aimed at helping Finger Lakes Gaming and Racetrack cope with new casino competition less than 30 miles away and an agreement reached with local horsemen late last week will enable the western New York racetrack to retain its traditional 155-day meet in 2016.

Pending approval from the New York State Gaming Commission, Finger Lakes will race from April 16 until Nov. 30. As recently as December, Finger Lakes had threaten to shorten its season to 126 days.

The Texas Racing Commission on Thursday voted to repeal the rules for historical racing it put in place in August 2014. The vote was 5-4, according to Robert Elrod, a spokesman for the agency. The commissioners that voted against repealing the rules were Robert Schmidt, Ron Ederer, Gary Aber, and Gloria Hicks.

Two horses in Texas owned by a trainer based at Sunland Park in New Mexico have tested positive for the equine herpesvirus, according to horse health agencies, while the number of horses testing positive for the disease at Sunland has risen to 72.