Trainer Jena Antonucci has appealed a 15-day suspension handed down to her on March 30 for a positive finding of the controlled substance lidocaine, arguing that her horse was accidentally contaminated with the drug by a worker in her stable.

The appeal was filed on Tuesday with the Federal Trade Commission, two days after an arbitrator for the Horseracing Integrity and Welfare Unit ruled that Antonucci was the “absolute insurer” of the horse that tested positive. The appeal requests a stay of the suspension.

A bill allowing Kentucky racetracks to offer fixed-odds betting on their races to Kentucky residents passed the state legislature late on Wednesday night. The bill also bans The Jockey Club from imposing a cap on the number of mares that can be covered by a stallion.

The two provisions were part of a large gambling bill that also raised the legal age limit for making a sports bet in Kentucky from 18 to 21 and authorized betting on fantasy-betting contests.

It was unclear on Thursday morning if Kentucky tracks have immediate plans to offer fixed-odds bets on their races.

Equibase has begun adding the full gate-to-wire times of races to its official charts, the company announced on Thursday.

The gate-to-wire times include the run-up, which is an often widely varying distance that horses must reach after breaking from the gate before the official time of the race starts. Some horseplayers have been highly critical of the U.S. custom of using a run-up, which, depending on track configuration and surface, can vary between a few dozen feet to nearly a furlong in some rare cases.

The New York Racing Association plans to add signals from top-tier tracks to its daily racing broadcasts on networks associated with FOX and is exploring the creation of a broadcast channel that would provide round-the clock coverage of racing, officials for NYRA said on Wednesday.

A federal judge in Louisville has ruled that the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority violated its enabling legislation when it used a formula that included purses in determining a track’s dues to the organization.

The ruling, by Benjamin Beaton of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky, hands a symbolic victory to Churchill Downs Inc., which filed a lawsuit late in 2024 challenging the formula.

Equibase has changed its formula for assigning ratings to horses in a way that will significantly boost the rating for a horse that breaks its maiden within its first two starts, the company said on Wednesday.

Under the new formula, a horse that wins in its first or second start will receive “an upward adjustment to their rating that reflects the significance of that win,” Equibase said in a release. The previous formula was producing ratings that were “frequently lower relative to what the win actually demonstrated,” according to Equibase.

A national conservation group has secured an option to purchase Golden Gate Fields, the Bay Area racetrack owned by 1/ST Racing and Gaming that closed in 2024. The prospective new owner will seek to convert the 161-acre property into a park and recreational area if the purchase is completed.

Keeneland is increasing the minimum wager for its superfecta from 10 cents to 50 cents and increasing the minimum for its pick three bets from 50 cents to $1, effective at the beginning of this year’s spring meet on April 3, the track announced on Thursday.

The decision to increase the minimums on the two bets runs counter to the direction most tracks have taken over the past two decades to drive down minimums to encourage small bettors to participate in exotic pools or cut the costs of covering more combinations.

FanDuel TV, the cable network that has broadcast live horse races on a dedicated channel since 1999, will begin to phase out its horse racing studio productions this summer and cease operations as a cable channel at the end of 2027, according to an official familiar with the company’s plans who spoke on the condition of anonymity. 

Francisco Mena, who won more than 1,600 races in a career that spanned more than four decades, died on March 18 in a hospital in Rosarito, Mexico, according to his brother, Guillermo.

Mena was 78. He died of natural causes, Guillermo Mena said.

Mena, better known as Paco, was a four-time leading rider at the Los Angeles county fair in Pomona, where he won a then-record 38 races at the 1981 meeting.