ARCADIA, Calif. – Before Saturday’s Grade 1 Pegasus World Cup at Gulfstream Park, Mucho Gusto had won four Grade 3 races since November 2018 and finished second or third in three Grade 1 races in 10 starts at 2 and 3.

As a 4-year-old, Mucho Gusto is a different runner. The colt ran the best race of his career to win the $3 million Pegasus World Cup, a victory likely to lead to a start in the $20 million Saudi Cup at 1 1/8 miles at Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Feb. 29, trainer Bob Baffert said on Sunday.

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Brian Lynch and his partners held several of the 334 live Rainbow 6 tickets heading into the two Pegasus World Cup events Saturday at Gulfstream Park, but they didn’t have one of the two eventual winners that returned $394,349 apiece.

“I singled Admission Office, too,” Lynch said early Sunday from his base at the Palm Meadows training center. “I kept the faith.”

Shaun Bridgmohan suffered nothing more than a pulled groin while Jack Gilligan broke his collarbone and fractured at least one facial bone in an ugly spill in the ninth race Friday at Fair Grounds.

He Looks Hot, the 2019 Quarter Horse World Champion, has been retired after finishing last of six in a division of the Brad McKinzie Los Alamitos Winter Championship trials on Jan. 19.

Owner and breeder Ed Allred and trainer Scott Willoughby made the announcement on Thursday evening at the Pacific Coast Quarter Horse Racing Association’s annual awards dinner at Los Alamitos where He Looks Hot was honored as the organization’s Horse of the Year for 2019.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Five years after the New York Racing Association began discussing the idea of constructing a world-class equine drug testing laboratory, Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s 2021 budget gives the company authorization to do just that.

In a press release put out by the governor’s office Friday, Cuomo’s budget would permit NYRA to use capital funds to finance, construct, and equip a new state-of-the-art drug testing laboratory and research center.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Bridlewood Cat, winner of two straight since returning from a layoff, takes the next logical step in her progression toward stakes company when she heads a field of six entered in a second-level allowance race Sunday at Aqueduct.

Bridlewood Cat, a 4-year-old half-sister to Grade 1 winner Sweet Loretta trained by Jonathan Thomas for Bridlewood Farm, is trying to use this race as a springboard to the $100,000 Correction Stakes here on March 14. Both this race and the Correction are at six furlongs, the distance at which Bridlewood Cat has already won twice.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Led by Shotski, the Grade 2 Remsen Stakes winner, five horses pointing to next Saturday’s Grade 3, $250,000 Withers Stakes at Aqueduct, put in workouts Friday morning at three different venues.

At Laurel, Shotski worked five furlongs in 1:02. Trainer Jeremiah O’Dwyer said he was aboard Shotski and that he had two stablemates in front of him for the move.

ARCADIA, Calif. – Yeng Again may turn out to be one of the bargains of the 2018 Keeneland September yearling sale.

Purchased for $75,000, Yeng Again will make his career debut in a maiden special weight race at 5 1/2 furlongs at Santa Anita on Sunday. The colt, by Carpe Diem, has worked well in recent weeks, including a five-furlong workout in 59 seconds on Jan. 12, the fastest of 69 works at the distance.

“He’s pretty quick, a nice, big horse,” trainer Richard Baltas said. “He’s finally ready to run.”

ARCADIA, Calif. – In the autumn, United nearly won a race in which he was not expected to be a factor and lost a race in which he was favored.

United’s surprise second by a head at 51-1 to eventual Horse of the Year Bricks and Mortar in the Breeders’ Cup Turf at Santa Anita on Nov. 2 was followed by a neck loss at even money to Oscar Dominguez in the Grade 2 John Henry Turf Championship at Del Mar on Dec. 1.

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – It was a record-equaling night at the Eclipse Awards for those connected to Bricks and Mortar, the Horse of the Year and male turf champion, but for the horse’s majority owner Seth Klarman it was a night not only to celebrate the achievements of his horse, but to implore the sport’s leaders to get their act together.