A barn fire on a farm located near Keeneland Race Course killed eight Thoroughbreds early Friday morning.

The fire damaged property on Rice Road, which runs behind the historic racetrack. It did not reach the nearby Keeneland Training Center, which houses several well-known horses, including two-time Horse of the Year Wise Dan.

The Virginia Racing Commission on Wednesday ordered Colonial Downs to come to an agreement with horsemen on a 25-day, five-week meet for this year by May 17, even though its executive director acknowledged that the commission has few options to force a deal.

Frank Petramalo, the executive director of the Virginia Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association, said Thursday that horsemen supported the 25-day meet and that he had drawn up a contract for Colonial Downs to sign. He said the horsemen had not yet met formally with Colonial officials, however.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – The huge Kentucky Derby wager that dropped the odds on Candy Boy from 16-1 to 9-1 totaled just more than $1 million and was placed through an offshore account-wagering hub based on the Isle of Man, Churchill Downs officials confirmed Thursday.

A Louisiana Senate committee on Tuesday deferred action on a bill that would require Churchill Downs to spend 10 percent of its slot-machine revenue on capital improvements at its Fair Grounds racetrack in New Orleans.

The decision by the committee puts the bill on the back burner for at least one week. During the hearing, representatives of Louisiana horsemen were highly critical of Churchill’s management of the track, a position they have taken over the past several months in an effort to get the company to make improvements to Fair Grounds.

All horses running in the Preakness Stakes on May 17 will be required to be on the grounds of Pimlico Race Course by noon of the Thursday prior to the race and will be subjected to additional security protocols, the track announced Tuesday.

Post-race tests on samples pulled from horses running in the Kentucky Derby on Saturday and the Kentucky Oaks on Friday at Churchill Downs were all negative for prohibited substances, the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission said Tuesday.

The samples were tested by the commission’s laboratory, LGC Science Group in Lexington, for 1,500 substances under the so-called supertesting protocols. The laboratory expedited the testing, the KHRC said.

Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona has signed a bill that allows telephone betting on horse and dog racing in Arizona, opening the state up to account wagering seven years after Arizona’s legislature cracked down on the practice.

The bill was passed overwhelmingly by the legislature several weeks ago, but not before stripping out language that would have allowed residents to place bets over the Internet. Nevertheless, the bill brings Arizona into the modern age of horse racing, where account wagering has been the only growing source of betting on races for the past decade.

Wagering on U.S. horse races was down 6.1 percent in April compared with the same month last year, a decline that was coupled with a significant contraction in the number of race days during the month, according to figures released Monday by Equibase.

Wagering fell to $812.6 million from $865.1 million in April 2013, according to the figures. The number of race days, however, fell 6.6 percent, from 380 to 355, making average wagering per race day this April $2.29 million, compared with average wagering per race day of $2.28 million in April 2013.

Betting on the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs on Saturday was down slightly from last year, while overall betting on the 13-race card rose slightly, according to a side-by-side comparison of charts of the races.

Betting on the Derby was $124.66 million, according to the chart of the race, compared with betting of $125.66 million last year, down 0.8 percent. Both races had 19-horse fields. The totals do not include the money bet in the future wagers offered by Churchill in the months leading up to the race.

Pennsylvania’s auditor general is in the midst of an audit of the state’s Race Horse Development Fund, which has distributed approximately $1.5 billion in slot machine subsidies to the state’s trainers, horse owners, and breeders over the past decade.