ARCADIA, Calif. - If there is strength in numbers, trainers like Bob Baffert, Eoin Harty, Jerry Hollendorfer, and John Sadler have been hitting the weight room. Led by the Baffert-trained Lookin at Lucky, the likely Eclipse Award winner as champion 2-year-old male, many of the West Coast's best prospects for next spring's Kentucky Derby and Kentucky Oaks are concentrated in those barns.
The racing industry in Maryland vowed on Monday night to push back against the approval of a zoning measure that would allow the construction of a casino in Arundel Mills Mall near Laurel Park.
The approval by the Anne Arundel County Council caps a 10-month effort by the Cordish Cos. to get local go-aheads for the casino, which could be the largest in Maryland, housing 4,750 slot machines. The council voted 4 to 2 to issue a zoning permit for the casino on Monday night, over objections from local anti-gambling groups and Laurel's owners, who want a casino of their own.
MIAMI - Trainer Bill White was happy to be back in action on Monday for the first time in three weeks. Restrictions were imposed on all three of his barns at Calder - and the Calder backstretch was placed under quarantine - after a horse from his stable contracted and ultimately died from a case of equine herpesvirus.
But as glad as he was to be able to run horses again, White was even happier that the ordeal was finally over and that the case of the contagious disease turned out to be an isolated incident.
OLDSMAR, Fla. - Anthony Pecoraro has been racing at Tampa Bay Downs long enough to know that there is no substitute for fitness when horses race over this safe but sandy and somewhat tiring racing strip.
Having his runners prepared for the beginning of this meeting has paid off as Pecoraro has jumped out to the early lead in the trainers' race despite having just 10 horses on the grounds. With a training double last Saturday, Pecoraro has now won with 7 of his first 10 starters over the first five days of this meet through Saturday.
STICKNEY, Ill. - In the seventh race on Dec. 3 at Hawthorne, a horse named Run Frankie Run ran down the backstretch trailing a field of $10,000 maiden claimers. Just before the half-mile pole - no warning, blink of an eye - he tumbled to the ground.
Run Frankie Run did not break down: Moments later, he got to his feet and ran off. Nor did he clip heels with another horse, or shy away from some fearful object. Run Frankie Run simply tripped and fell, which basically does not happen to racehorses.
I Want Revenge, the morning-line favorite for the Kentucky Derby who was scratched on the morning of that race because of an ankle injury, has resumed light training at a farm in Kentucky, co-owner David Lanzman said over the weekend.
Lanzman emphasized that I Want Revenge is only jogging and that he is far from a return to racetrack training or a race.
"We're taking things really slowly," Lanzman said. "Every day that he goes to the track I get an e-mail. He's just jogging."
INGLEWOOD, Calif. - Hollywood Park completed its 27-day fall meeting on Sunday with a drop in average all-sources handle and ontrack handle, track president Jack Liebau said.
The track did not release detailed attendance and handle figures after Sunday's program, but track officials said that overall handle was down 4.3 percent, to approximately $7.8 million, and that ontrack handle was down 11 percent, to $935,000. Average ontrack attendance was down 3 percent, according to Liebau.
Liebau said he anticipated a decline in major business categories.
Three weeks after a computer glitch led to a postponement, Churchill Downs will begin selling ticket packages to the 2010 Kentucky Derby and Oaks, officials with the Louisville, Ky., track announced Monday.
A total of 3,000 seats for both days will go on sale Jan. 6 at noon Eastern on the website tickets.churchilldowns.com. The online sales by Churchill, the first in Derby history, were scheduled to begin last Wednesday, Dec. 16, but a "potential data error," as track officials described it, caused the delay.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. - Blind Luck left trainer and co-owner Jerry Hollendorfer nearly speechless with her seven-length win in the on Sunday.
When he watched the replay of her last-to-first move around the final turn and into early stretch, Hollendorfer just shook his head with amazement. "That's very nice," he said.
