Churchill Downs Inc. has reached an agreement to buy a casino that opened less than a year ago in Oxford, Maine, for $160 million, the company announced on Friday.
If the deal closes, the casino will become the third stand-alone casino property purchased by Churchill within the past three years. The company has also bought two casinos in Mississippi, in addition to the two casinos it operates at its Calder Race Course in Miami and Fair Grounds race track in New Orleans.
Keeneland announced Tuesday that Julie Cauthen has been named to the newly created position of director of owner and client development. Cauthen will be tasked with expanding Keeneland’s efforts domestically to draw new owners to the Thoroughbred industry and managing relationships with existing Keeneland clients.
Cauthen departs Jerry Crawford’s Donegal Racing, where she served as chief operating officer and managed the day-to-day operations of the syndicate while acting as client liaison. She will report to vice president of sales Walt Robertson at Keeneland.
The three finalists for the seventh annual Dr. Tony Ryan Book Award were announced on Monday, narrowing the field down from a group of seven semi-finalists.
The winner of the 2012 Book Award will be announced on April 10 at Castleton Lyons in Lexington, Ky., during a cocktail reception held in a room above the farm’s stallion barn. First prize is $10,000, with $1,000 awarded to each runner-up. In addition, all three finalists will receive a Tipperary Crystal trophy.
A racing industry group that devises recommendations for U.S. medication policies on Tuesday approved withdrawal times and threshold levels for four therapeutic medications, completing a process to establish the parameters for a list of 24 therapeutic drugs that will be allowed to be administered to racehorses under new model rules.
When the board of the Breeders’ Cup met recently to vote on whether to suspend a policy that would ban the raceday administration of the legal anti-bleeding medication furosemide at its 2013 event, its members had to weigh the changes that had occurred in the racing industry since the policy was first approved in 2011.
As it turned out, the racing industry hadn’t changed much at all.
Julie Balog, Keeneland's director of communications, will step down from her position at the Lexington, Ky., racetrack following the 2013 spring meeting to become vice president of marketing and communications for the YMCA of Central Kentucky.
The Kentucky Court of Appeals has overturned a decision by Kentucky regulators to issue a five-year suspension to Dr. Rod Stewart in 2009. Regulators issued the suspension after a search at Keeneland of the veterinarian’s equipment turned up cobra venom and several anti-Parkinson’s drugs.
A U.S. district court judge has allowed former Eclipse Award-winning owner Michael Gill to withdraw from a lawsuit he filed with a trainer against jockeys at Penn National Race Course, according to a court filing.
Trainers of horses who suffer catastrophic injuries at the racetracks owned by Penn National Gaming Inc. will be required to participate in a “mortality review” with track officials and veterinarians under new house rules the company is putting into effect for all of its tracks in 2013, Penn National announced Wednesday.
