OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Attendance was up slightly, but handle was down sharply on Saturday’s Wood Memorial card at Aqueduct, possibly owing to the lack of turf racing.
Attendance for the 12-race card was 12,719, up 600 people, or 4.9 percent, from last year’s crowd of 12,119.
Ontrack handle was $2,718,962, down 16.6 percent from last year’s $3,258,632. All-sources handle Saturday was $18,097,037, down 16.2 percent from last year’s total of $21,601,671.
Betting on U.S. Thoroughbred races declined nearly 2 percent in March compared to the same month last year even though race days did not decline, according to figures released by Equibase on Saturday.
Wagering in March was $964.5 million, down 1.9 percent compared to betting of $983.3 million in March of last year, according to the figures. Racetracks held 388 race days during the month, up one day compared to the same month last year.
In 1965, future Hall of Fame trainer John Nerud, who turned 101 this past Feb. 9, was chasing a runaway horse. When he reached for the horse’s reins, the pony he was riding propped, tossing Nerud over the top.
The trainer landed on his head, but walked it off and went back to his business. Over the next five weeks, Nerud ignored fainting spells and slurred speech until finally his wife insisted he go to a highly regarded Boston hospital.
A federal bill that reinstates several recently expired tax advantages to owners of racehorses and breeding stock has been passed out of the U.S. Senate Finance Committee and is headed to the Senate floor, lobbyists for the racing industry announced on Thursday.
The tax advantages, which accelerate the depreciation period for racehorses and provide for bonus depreciation allowances, expired at the end of 2013 after first being passed in 2008. The bill would also provide for higher expense allowances.
It was the morning of Sept. 13, 2004, when a small group of horses was allowed onto a new training track at Keeneland Race Course in Lexington, Ky. The five-furlong oval had been stripped of its old dirt track and covered in a surface new to North American racing, Polytrack, a wax-coated mixture of natural and synthetic materials.
“It’s absolutely awesome,” said retired jockey Patty Cooksey after breezing a horse. “It seems like the horses have springs on their feet.”
LEXINGTON, Ky. – The Kentucky Horse Racing Commission on Wednesday unanimously approved applications by both Keeneland and the Red Mile to operate hundreds of slot machine-like devices at separate facilities at their Lexington locations.
Major account-wagering providers had nothing definitive to say on Tuesday about how they would pay for a new 0.5 percent tax levied by the Kentucky legislature on wagers made by Kentucky residents through their operations.
The tax, discussed for several years but finally enacted in this year’s budget legislation, will assess a half-cent charge on every dollar wagered by Kentucky residents to shore up the state’s Kentucky Thoroughbred Development Fund.
The overall fatality rate for North American Thoroughbreds has remained relatively unchanged over the five years that injury data have been collected despite widespread efforts to improve the health and safety of racehorses over the same time frame, according to updated figures released on Monday afternoon by the Jockey Club.
The fatality rate for U.S. Thoroughbreds on artificial surfaces continued to be sharply lower than the fatality rate on dirt surfaces in 2013, according to data released by The Jockey Club on Monday from the Equine Injury Database.
The Kentucky legislature reached a deal on a budget Sunday that reinstates a 1.5 percent tax on Instant Racing machines and assesses for the first time a 0.5 percent tax on bets made through account-wagering companies.
The 1.5 percent Instant Racing tax was inserted into the budget to address a recent court ruling that said a regulation enforced by the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission to tax handle at the same rate on the slot-like machines was unlawful. The 1.5 percent tax will go toward the state’s general budget.
