Claiborne Farm will raise Arch's stud fee in 2007 while lowering fees for four of its other stallions, the farm announced Monday.
Arch will carry a $25,000 stud fee in 2007, up from his $15,000 fee this season. His most noteworthy runners this year are Alabama and Gazelle winner Pine Island, Del Mar Oaks winner Arravale, and dual Group 1 winner Les Arcs. Arch, an 11-year-old Kris S. horse, also is the sire of South Africa's 2006 champion sprinter, Overarching.
Horse owner Mike Pegram has withdrawn involvement from a proposal to expand Los Alamitos Race Course to accommodate Thoroughbred racing, he announced over the weekend.
The $50 million proposal, designed to replace Hollywood Park on the Southern California Thoroughbred calendar, may still go forward, according to Los Alamitos owner Ed Allred. Allred warned that the expansion project would need the cooperation of Hollywood Park, local governments, and the racing industry to proceed.
Both houses of Congress early Saturday morning passed legislation that includes provisions that prohibit most forms of internet gambling except for an exemption for horseracing.
The language affecting internet gambling was attached to a larger measure providing funding for security at U.S. ports. According to Greg Avioli, the chief executive officer of the National Thoroughbred Racing Association, "intense negotiations" over the past 72 hours led to the gambling measure being attached to the ports bill.
With Distinction, a Grade 3-winning 5-year-old son of Storm Cat raced by the Robert and Beverly Lewis Trust, has been sold for 2007 stud duty at Hartley/De Renzo Thoroughbreds near Ocala, Fla. Syndication is underway, though the horse will race for the rest of the year as the property of Randy Hartley and Dean De Renzo. . . . A two-million-euro Sadler?s Wells filly topped the three-day Goffs Million yearling sale in Ireland on Thursday. A daughter of Alakananda, the filly sold for the equivalent of about $2.5 million to Barbara Facchino?s Barouche Stud.
Afleet Alex, winner of the 2005 Preakness and Belmont and champion 3-year-old male that year, underwent surgery on Sept. 26 to repair an inguinal hernia, Gainesway Farm announced late Wednesday afternoon. The 4-year-old Afleet Alex is expected to make a full recovery.
Inguinal hernia is a condition in which part of the intestine or an abdominal organ is displaced through the inguinal ring that leads to the scrotum.
Trainer Greg Martin, who was arrested in early 2005 and charged with administering an illegal substance to a racehorse in 2003, was sentenced Thursday to six months probation and fined $2,000, according to records of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Champion Afleet Alex, winner of the 2005 Preakness and Belmont Stakes, is recovering from hernia surgery at Rood and Riddle Equine Hospital in Lexington, Ky. The 4-year-old horse, who stands at Gainesway Farm in Lexington, is expected back at the farm later this week and is having what the farm termed "an uneventful recovery" from the Sept. 26 surgery.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - Hall of Famer and 1985 champion sprinter Precisionist has been euthanized at the Old Friends equine retirement center near Georgetown, Ky. He was 25 and had an inoperable sinus tumor.
"We discovered that he had a virulent malignant tumor that was growing very quickly," explained Old Friends president Michael Blowen.
Blowen said Precisionist was euthanized at Old Friends at about 12:30 p.m. on Wednesday.
ARCADIA, Calif. - Trainer Jeff Mullins had a starter test in excess of the permitted level of the nerve blocker mepivacaine at the Hollywood Park spring-summer meeting earlier this year, the trainer said on Tuesday. Mullins, the leading trainer at the Hollywood Park spring-summer meeting, will have a hearing before track stewards at a date to be announced.