With the Summit meeting at Thistledown ending Friday, Ernesto Oro has the riding title all wrapped up with a 48-30 lead over Weldon Cloninger Jr. the leading rider at last year's meet.
"This feels good," said Oro, a native of Peru. "I've had a very good meeting."
For the ninth consecutive season, the Summit meeting will have a different riding champion.
Trainer Ray Tracy Jr. won his 1,000th Thoroughbred race Tuesday at Prairie Meadows when Samara Street cruised home by 12 lengths over a field of maiden claimers. Samara Street is a daughter of the stakes-winning mare Miss Guts, also trained by Tracy.
Tracy began his career in 1983 under the tutelage of his father, looking after a string of Quarter Horses and Thoroughbreds in his home state of Montana. His brothers Greg and Jim have also enjoyed successful careers as horse trainers.
David Anderson saddled 38 winners to capture his eighth straight trainer title at Lincoln State Fair and his 12th title since 1992.
The 37-day meet concluded Sunday with a second consecutive year of strong increases in attendance. Attendance for the meet fell just short of 90,000, up 6 percent from 2008 and an increase of more than 24 percent since 2007. Mutuel handle ontrack was up 7 percent this year, at $2,134,332, and up 17 percent since 2007.
Preparations continue at Canterbury Park for Claiming Crown Day, the track's biggest event. More than 200 horses were nominated to the seven-race, $600,000 series, which will be contested next Saturday as part of a card that will also feature the running of the $100,000 Lady Canterbury Breeders' Cup. Russell Baze is expected to be one of the riders who will visit Shakopee for the event.
Four stakes races and the showcase Michigan Sire Stakes will have smaller purses, but Pinnacle Race Course is now set to run through Oct. 19, general manager Mike Mackey said Tuesday.
The former racing commissioner Christine White issued an executive order slashing race dates at Pinnacle and other state tracks, including harness racing and a mixed meet at Mt. Pleasant Meadows, due to the state's budget crisis.
ETOBICOKE, Ontario - Not Bourbon and Sand Cove, a pair of Ontario-sired 4-year-old colts who combined to win seven stakes for trainer Roger Attfield last year, both are scheduled to make their first start of the season this weekend.
Sand Cove and Not Bourbon were nominated to both Saturday's $100,000 Ontario Jockey Club, a seven-furlong turf race for Ontario foals, and Sunday's $150,000 Bold Venture, an open race at 6 1/2 furlongs on the main track.
BOSSIER CITY, La. - Trainer Bob Young's statistics with 2-year-olds speak for themselves - an almost 30 percent win clip with first-time starters and a success rate of 23 percent with all his juvenile starters. Saturday, Young will try and introduce some black type to the equation as he plans to send out two starters in both the Minstrel and Princess stakes at Louisiana Downs.
In 1996, when Spencer Childers was recognized by the American Quarter Horse Association as the owner and co-breeder of the year, he had been breeding Quarter Horses for 47 years.
Childers, who died on July 9 at the age of 97, had plenty of success before that season, but 1996 was an outstanding year - one in which his homebred Uncas won the Ed Burke and Governor's Cup futurities and Luva Secret won the Golden State Futurity, all at Los Alamitos.
Hoosier Kingdom was kept just off the early pace before taking over at the half-mile pole and then drawing off through the stretch in ridden-out fashion to win the $70,000 Governor's at Indiana Downs on Tuesday evening by 4 1/4 lengths.
Trained by Ron Herrell, Hoosier Kingdom made it look easy besting his 10 other 3-year-old Indiana-bred rivals, with the outcome never in doubt from the far turn to the finish under jockey Orlando Mojica. Tenmor, under Leandro Goncalves, was a hard-fought second by a neck over Lil Albert E.