Trainer Andrew Lerner will have his final starter on Saturday at Santa Anita before disbanding his small stable.

Lerner, 32, has won 88 races since he began training in 2017 and said on Thursday that he plans to stay involved in California racing as an owner.

A leading factor in the decision to quit training was the birth of a daughter last month.

“It was a decision I thought about six or seven months ago,” he said. “We have a newborn daughter and my priorities changed.”

Brandothebartender, a $40,000 claim in 2018 who later won four stakes, has been retired from racing because of a recent injury sustained in a workout at Santa Anita.

Brandothebartender will be retired to the Old Friends retirement farm in Kentucky, according to Jerry Weseloh of Flawless Racing, which is part of the group that owns the 8-year-old gelding.

Trained by Craig Dollase at the end of his career, Brandothebartender was under consideration for Saturday’s $100,000 California Flag Handicap for statebred turf sprinters at Santa Anita when the injury was detected.

Choose Joy has been one of the stars of the local racing season, having won five of her eight starts and missing by a neck and a nose in two others during her 2021 campaign. Four of those victories have come in overnight handicaps, including her last three in a row. She scored a 2 1/2-length triumph when making her debut over the synthetic surface here earlier this month.

Marcus Vitali, who with Bob Baffert was one of two trainers served with hearing notices by the New York Racing Association, has been scheduled to appear before a NYRA-appointed hearing officer beginning on March 1, NYRA said late on Wednesday.

Hawthorne Racecourse has moved their lone open stakes race, the $100,000 Hawthorne Derby, from Oct. 16 to Oct. 23 because of persistent rain in Chicago. Track officials, certain that the grass race would have to be moved to the main track due to course conditions, made the early decision to reschedule the 3-year-old turf route. 

ELMONT, N.Y. – Higher Truth, beaten less than a length in three consecutive stakes, will try again to win her first black-type event when she heads a field of eight entered in Saturday’s Grade 2, $200,000 Sands Point Stakes for 3-year-old fillies at 1 1/8 miles on turf.

Higher Truth, an Irish-bred daughter of Galileo trained by Chad Brown, was third, beaten a half-length in the Grade 1 Belmont Oaks. She was second, beaten three-quarters of a length in the Saratoga Oaks, and second, beaten a half-length, in the Jockey Club Oaks.

ELMONT, N.Y. – Tom Morley knows about the cyclical nature of training horses, which is why he’s going to enjoy the heck out of the recent run of success his stable has been on the last six weeks.

LEXINGTON, Ky. – Trainer Vicki Oliver couldn’t ask for Flippant to be doing any better. Whether or not the gray Tapit filly is good enough to be a serious factor Saturday when putting her three-race win streak on the line in the Grade 1 Queen Elizabeth II Challenge Cup at Keeneland, well, that’s a separate matter.

“She’s doing great, training great, breezing really well,” said Oliver. “We’ll just have to see how she matches up with these top fillies.”

Joi Garner, a former top executive with the NBA players’ association’s marketing and licensing company, has been hired as the general counsel for the New York Racing Association, the association announced on Wednesday.

Octane, who captured the final two legs of the open division of the Florida Sire Series including the 1 1/16-mile In Reality by 1 3/4 lengths while earning a 93 Beyer Speed Figure in the process, will bypass the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile and await his 3-year-old campaign, according to Brian Cohen, stable manager for owner-breeder Arindel.