Hastings Racecourse in Vancouver, British Columbia, will no longer conduct live race meets, the track announced on Friday night, a decision hastened by a move last week by the provincial government to cease applying casino subsidies to the racing operation.

The decision could spell the end to major live Thoroughbred racing in Canada’s westernmost province after years of struggle. Horsemen at the track are facing the possibility of closing up shop or moving their operations to tracks in the Prairie provinces, farther east in Canada, or south to Washington or other states.

Handle on Thoroughbred races held at U.S. tracks during the month of November dropped nearly 8 percent compared to the same month last year, according to figures released by Equibase on Friday. The decline was heavily impacted by a quirk of the calendar and a sharp drop in races held.

This year, the two-day Breeders’ Cup event was held on Oct. 31 and Nov. 1, while last year, the event took place entirely in November. This year, total commingled handle on the Friday, Oct. 31, Breeders’ Cup card at Del Mar was $62 million, $9 million shy of the total drop in handle this year.

The racing related fatality rate at tracks under the jurisdiction of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority in the third quarter of this year was 1.02 per 1,000 starts, according to data released by HISA on Friday.

Although quarterly rates can fluctuate substantially because fatalities are relatively rare events, the 1.02 quarterly rate is in line with recent long-term trends. For all of 2024, the fatality rate at HISA tracks was 0.90 per 1,000 starts, though the rate this year has ticked up a bit.

Total betting and average betting per race climbed significantly at the recently concluded Churchill Downs fall meet, with figures benefiting from a nearly 50 percent increase in turf races, according to an analysis by Daily Racing Form.

Churchill held 47 races on the turf course during the 26-day meet, compared to 32 over the same number of days during the fall meet last year. Turf races generally draw larger, more competitive fields than dirt races, presenting a more attractive product to bettors.

A commission set up by New York to study locations for full-fledged casinos in the New York City metropolitan area on Monday recommended that Resorts World Casino adjacent to Aqueduct racetrack receive one of the available licenses.

Trainer Danny Gargan, best known for winning the 2024 Belmont Stakes with Dornoch, will begin serving a 10-day suspension on Dec. 7 after acknowledging that he worked a horse within a stand-down period that is required for horses that receive joint injections.

FedEx, the only company providing cross-country flights for Thoroughbreds, said in a statement on Thursday that its chartering services would likely resume after Jan. 1 following an extended pause in horse shipping for inspections of its fleet.

Officials for the New York Racing Association and the New York Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association on Friday publicly acknowledged at a state legislative hearing that they have so far been unable to agree on the number of racing dates that should be run over the next two years at NYRA’s tracks.

An arbitrator hearing a case involving a high concentration of the banned substance cobalt has handed down a mandatory two-year suspension to trainer Antonio Meraz while raising questions about the “fairness and proportionality” of the penalty.

The arbitrator, Matthew Mitten, ordered a 2-year-suspension to the Midwest-based Meraz after concluding that Meraz had been unable to establish that he was not at fault for the excessive concentration of cobalt in a post-race test for his horse, First Kitten, following a race on Feb. 12 at Mahoning Valley Race Course.

The Louisiana Racing Commission has pulled back from adopting rules that would have sharply restricted the reasons that owners could void a claim after receiving significant pushback from national organizations.

At a meeting on Tuesday, the commission unanimously adopted proposed rules that would allow claims to be voided in the event of death, significant injury, or lameness – as determined by a commission veterinarian. Those rules are similar to void-claim allowances that have been adopted in nearly every racing jurisdiction in the U.S. over the past ten years.