Coronavirus

The New York Race Track Chaplaincy of America (NYRTCA) is asking for support to provide woman living and working on the Belmont Park backstretch and the surrounding community with 'Baskets of Blessings' this coming Mother's Day. A donation of $100 will fund a special basket which will be lovingly prepared and include an assortment of food, toiletries, and special gifts. Each basket will be hand-delivered by the NYRTCA ahead of Mother's Day, Sunday, May 10. "The mothers of our backstretch community have perhaps been most impacted by the current crisis,...

Fasig-Tipton will consolidate its July, Saratoga, and New York-Bred yearling sales into one selected yearling auction--the 2020 Selected Yearlings Showcase--to be held Wednesday and Thursday, September 9-10, at its Lexington, Kentucky facility. The company came to the decision after evaluating the progression of the COVID-19 pandemic for the last several weeks and it was made after consultation with Keeneland, whose September Yearling Sale begins Sept. 14. "We are excited to offer our buyers and sellers a selected yearling venue in Kentucky," said Fasig-Tipton President Boyd Browning. "We envision this catalogue...

About the time 'spring was about to sprung,' we all got hit...and hit very hard. As a way to adapt and hopefully share, about 8:30 each morning I posted short videos on Twitter. The grass was just starting to green and the birds were starting to sing and yes, we were welcoming our first crop of Oscar Performance babies here at Mill Ridge Farm. It made for a very uplifting setting and the response to these videos is heartwarming. At the same time, Horse Country was actively working with their...

With the GI Kentucky Derby postponed until September, NBC will present a special show Saturday--the traditional "first Saturday in May"--headlined by American Pharoah's Kentucky Derby win five years ago. The show begins at 3 p.m. ET. The three-hour The First Saturday In May: American Pharoah's Run to the Triple Crown will look back at American Pharoah's down-to-the-wire victory in the 141st Kentucky Derby, while introducing new stories and content. In addition, the broadcast will highlight Churchill Downs' first-ever virtual horse race--The Kentucky Derby: Triple Crown Showdown, a computer-simulated version of...

The French Government has expressed its support of a phased-in resumption of the racing programme in France from Monday, May 11, and has announced financial aid for the racing sector largely through a temporary cut in betting tax. Last Tuesday, the French Agriculture Minister Didier Guillaume and his ministerial colleague Gérald Darmanin met Edouard de Rothschild and Jean-Pierre Barjon, the respective heads of France Galop and trotting authority LeTrot, to discuss plans to allow the return of racing action in the week following the easing of lockdown restrictions for France....

Having attracted 22 entries Sunday for next Saturday's GI Arkansas Derby, Oaklawn Park has split the race for sophomores into two divisions for the first time ever. Each race will carry a $500,000 purse--the Arkansas Derby was originally scheduled to be held Apr. 11 and worth $750,000. "Because of our national crisis, we and the entire world of sports are in uncharted waters requiring unprecedented actions," said Oaklawn President Louis Cella. "We're trying to make the best of a very, very difficult situation. On the one hand, it is the...

The 2020 renewal of FWD Champions Day was conducted on a misty and overcast Sunday afternoon at Sha Tin Racecourse in the New Territories, atmospheric conditions befitting the current state of racing in Hong Kong. A recent spike in coronavirus cases has led to a re-tightening of social distancing requirements, meaning just a smattering of connections at the track on a day that typically draws upwards of 50,000 racegoers and meaning that foreign horses--in particular, those based in Japan--were unable to contest a meeting at which they have tasted considerable...

The Week in Review, by T.D. Thornton The COVID-19 virus has quarantined this week's GI Kentucky Derby, which has been rescheduled for Sept. 5. The last time America's most famous horse race got pushed off its traditional first Saturday in May calendar spot was 1945, when the nation was embroiled in World War II. It's impossible to make accurate comparisons between a global conflict and a pandemic that are happening 75 years apart. But sifting through archived news clippings about how horse racing endured and eventually overcame that long, government-mandated...

After some British trainers, among them Ralph Beckett and Mark Johnston, called for the resignation of British Horseracing Authority CEO Nick Rust due to his handling of British racing during the COVID-19 crisis, the Board of the BHA released a statement in support of Rust and his team on Sunday afternoon. The Sunday Telegraph first reported the trainers had written to the BHA's Chairwoman Annamarie Phelps requesting Rust's resignation. Rust will be leaving his position as CEO of the BHA at the end of the year. The BHA's statement read:...

If racing is allowed to resume by July 16, the New York Racing Association plans to run this summer in Saratoga, with or without fans being allowed in the stands, NYRA Senior Vice President of Racing Martin Panza told the TDN. The likelihood that the meet will be held spectator-free raises the question as to whether or not it would be more practical to keep the New York racing community in place and race during the summer at Belmont and Aqueduct. While that might be easier, Panza said Saratoga routinely...

For the team at the Backside Learning Center at Churchill Downs, this is normally their favorite time of year. Backstretch workers return home from working in warmer locations over the winter, families are reunited, and there's a general sense of community and solidarity. The Kentucky Derby is just a few weeks away and fundraising is in overdrive. But this year looks quite different. For starters, there is a much smaller community to serve. While the Backside Learning Center normally serves about 1,000 workers this time of year along with their...

FWD Champions Day at Hong Kong's Sha Tin Racecourse is annually a miniature version of December's Longines Hong Kong International Races, with three Group 1 races offering prize money of HK$63 million (£6.6 million/US$8.1 million) and only a top-level race over 2400 metres missing from the mix. At least some of the buzz about this year's event has been dashed owing to the coronavirus pandemic, which has rendered Champions Day a wholly domestic raceday, but the beat goes on, with the vast majority of the jurisdiction's top gallopers set to...