LEXINGTON, Ky. - Danny "Bear" Dion looked up from signing his receipt for a $350,000 Lion Heart colt and found himself surrounded by reporters' microphones, cameras, and tape recorders.
"I never got so much attention in my life," said Dion, owner of Bear Stables. "What did I do? I just bought a horse.
"A very nice horse."
Breeders' Cup Ltd. plans to ask the New Jersey Racing Commission to put in place procedures to draw blood from horses before the running of this year's event at Monmouth Park on Oct. 26-27 in order to test for blood-enhancing drugs, a spokesman for Breeders' Cup said on Monday.
If the plan is put in place, horses in the Breeders' Cup would be subject to prerace blood tests for the first time.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - What's new at Fasig-Tipton Kentucky's July yearling sale? Everything from the sires to the sale pavilion, it seems.
The summer yearling season begins at the Fasig-Tipton auction on Monday and Tuesday at Newtown Paddocks in Lexington. This year the sale features a bumper crop of 582 yearlings, more than half of whom fall in the auction's New Sire Showcase spotlighting stallions with no more than two crops to race. The auction also will mark the debut of Fasig-Tipton's newly remodeled sale pavilion, which has been renovated from top to bottom.
Breeders' Cup Ltd. posted record revenue totals from both nomination fees and its eight-race event at Churchill Downs in 2006, according to financial statements released by the company on Thursday.
Nomination fees, which are collected from both breeders and stallion owners, totaled $22.5 million in 2006, an increase of 34.7 percent over 2005. For 2006, Breeders' Cup implemented a new fee structure that required owners of stallions who breed more than 50 mares to pay higher nomination fees.
A $2,024,291 yearling half-brother to Grade 1 winner Admire Moon topped Monday's opening session of the Japan Racing Horse Association's annual yearling and foal sale. The auction, which began with a single session devoted to yearlings, is taking place at Northern Horse Park on the Japanese island of Hokkaido.
The session-topping French Deputy colt is out of the Sunday Silence mare My Katies. Riichi Kondo purchased the colt from Katsmui Yoshida's Northern Farm.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - Barry Irwin has bought out his longtime partner Jeff Siegel in Team Valor, the Lexington-based company that sells partnerships in racehorses, the company announced on Monday.
Siegel, who co-founded Team Valor with Irwin in 1992, said that he wanted to focus on his broadcasting career and that Irwin was "kind enough to acquire my interest." Siegel has worked as an on-air handicapper and analyst at HorseRacing TV since 2002. HRTV is co-owned by Churchill Downs and Magna Entertainment Corp.
Handle at the spring meeting at Golden Gate fields and at the recently concluded San Joaquin County Fair in Stockton, Calif., showed increases over last year.
At the 35-day Golden Gate Fields spring meeting, which ran from April 25 to June 10, all sources handle (including simulcast betting from Golden Gate on other tracks) averaged $4,572,028 per day. That was a 3.2 percent increase over the same 35-day period last year - 28 days at Bay Meadows and 7 at Golden Gate.
The National Thoroughbred Racing Association had an excess of $2.3 million in operating revenues compared to its operating expenses in 2006, according to financial statements recently released by the association.
Operating revenues in 2006 were $74.1 million, compared to operating expenses of $71.8 million, according to the statements. Last year, operating revenues were $77.7 million and operating expenses $73.5 million.
The New York Racing Association announced significant purse increases for the last three weeks of the Belmont summer meet as well as for Saratoga.
Beginning Wednesday, purses for Belmont will go up by 12 percent, or $61,826 a day, compared with last year. The purse increase for Saratoga will be about 13.6 percent, or $92,694 a day more than they were last year.