Officials with the New York Racing Association this week announced big changes that will see the race move ahead of the rescheduled Kentucky Derby and the Preakness Stakes.
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Mike Brunker
Mike Brunker is an assistant city editor at the Review-Journal and he writes a weekly horse racing column. The column is posted on Thursday's and appears in Friday's print edition. He previously covered horse racing for the San Francisco Examiner, the Thoroughbred Times and NBCSports.com. Follow @mike_brunker on Twitter
Racing at Santa Anita Park will continue, most likely three times a week, through June 23 assuming all goes well. Action begins Friday with a nine-race card.
Churchill Downs, Charles Town and Golden Gate Fields all are expected to begin running within the next week, all without fans in the stands and with strict health and safety protocols in place to protect track workers.
We won’t be singing “My Old Kentucky Home” on Saturday, but racing fans will hardly be bereft on only the second opening Saturday in May in 146 years without a Kentucky Derby.
It should be a no-brainer, but we’ll likely find out in the coming days whether public health officials in California are willing to let Santa Anita Park reopen for racing sans spectators.
With all the cancellations, suspensions and closures, it should come as no surprise that both the Del Mar and Saratoga race meets hang in the balance.
But local public health officials in California have shut down Santa Anita Park and Golden Gate Fields despite the fact that neither track reported any COVID-19 cases.
The displacement of the Kentucky Derby from the first Saturday in May until the first Saturday in September has created a cascade effect on the 3-year-old division.
Javier Castellano, a Hall of Fame rider, tested positive for the disease after arriving in Florida with plans to ride in this weekend’s Florida Derby.
Most inhabitants of a city once renowned for its plush star-studded racebooks are unable to play the ponies, even as bettors in many other states continue to do so.
Twenty-seven owners, trainers and veterinarians are charged with conspiromg to give illegal performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) to the horses under their control.
Monmouth Park and BetMakers, an Australian company with experience in fixed-odds wagering, aim to begin offering fixed-odds wagers on the New Jersey track’s races in May.
Questions and unknowns abound in the first running of the $20 million race, which will take place Saturday in the Saudi capital of Riyadh.
Even by Mr. Triple Crown’s lofty standards, the Hall of Fame trainer’s current crop of 3-year-olds is extraordinary.
It wasn’t hard to spot Ashley Taylor amid the many gray and bald heads gathered at the National Horseplayers Championship at Bally’s last weekend.