Evangeline Downs

Jockey Corey Lanerie will call it a career at the conclusion of the Churchill Downs spring meet Sunday, June 28 following 35 years in the saddle, the track announced Friday. Lanerie will leave the sport having totaled more than 5,000 victories and earning north of $172-million in prize money with at least 1,244 wins at Churchill alone. The mark ties him in second all-time behind Hall of Famer Pat Day, who claims 2,482 trips to the winner's enclosure in the shadow of the Twin Spires. The Louisiana native began his...

Tim Thornton led the standings from start to finish to win his fourth riding title at Evangeline Downs when the Louisiana track concluded its 73-night season Monday. He finished the season with 96 victories from 385 mounts. Thornton also led the jockey colony in purse earnings with his mounts collecting $2,035,840. Allen Landry fended off a late stretch bid by Sam Breaux to win the trainer race by one victory--38 to 37, while Michele Rodriguez's Elite Thoroughbred Racing made it a three-peat in the owner standings. The operation had 21...

5. Spun Candy, CD, 6/28, 6 1/2 furlongs (VIDEO) Beyer Speed Figure- 86 (f, 3, by Hard Spun-Sugar Plum Fairy, by Drosselmeyer) O-Commonwealth Stable 3, On Our Own Stable and Dallas Stewart. B-Brushy Hill Stable (Ky). T-Dallas Stewart. J-Brian Hernandez Jr. Another who showed dramatic improvement--topping her previous high Beyer by 18 points--in her first try over a wet surface. A modest $85k Ocala 2-year-old purchase, she had been knocking heads with tough maidens in her first five starts, including Immersive and Senza Parole. 4. Roofer, BAQ, 6/27, 6 furlongs...

Churchill Downs, Inc. (CDI), which in recent seasons has ended racing at such high-profile tracks as Arlington and Calder over alleged profitability issues, on Tuesday threatened to pull out of Fair Grounds over a recent court ruling that bars it from using a certain type of slot machine, saying the ban would cause it to lose money at the New Orleans track and 13 off-track-betting outlets it owns. Reporting by Anthony McAuley and Tyler Bridges at NOLA.com first broke the news, which emerged out of an "emergency" Louisiana Racing Commission...

Norman Stables' Secret Faith (Aurelius Maximus) continued her demolition of the Louisiana-bred stakes ranks with a front-running 7 1/4-length victory in the fillies' division of the Louisiana Futurity at Fair Grounds Sunday. The 2-year-old filly has now won six of her seven starts to date, with five stakes wins at four different tracks. She has a combined winning margin of 40 1/2 lengths, led off by a 14-length score in the D.S. Shine Young Futurity at Evangeline Downs in August. Jayde Gelner purchased Secret Faith on behalf of owner Robbie...

Elio Barrera captured the first riding title of his young career and Juan Larrosa fended off a number of challengers in a tightly contested trainer's race at the Evangeline Downs Thoroughbred meet which concluded Saturday. Michele Rodriguez's Elite Thoroughbred Racing repeated as the meet's leading owner. Barrera, a 22-year-old from Guatemala in his second full season of riding, finished the season with 80 wins from 420 mounts at the meet which opened Apr. 5. He was one of five riders to eclipse the million-dollar mark in purse earnings, topping the...

Louisiana Jess (Vekoma) ran to the odds and picked up not only his first stakes win but also became Vekoma's first black-type winner Saturday night at Evangeline Downs. One of five runners to come into this state-bred restricted D. S. Shine Young Futurity off a victory--his being June 14 at Churchill Downs in an auction price-restricted maiden special--the Bret Calhoun-trainee was the heavy 1-5 favorite by the time the gates opened and he did not disappoint his backers. Pressing the issue and three wide around the turn as Big Rasee...

In 15 starts, My Lil Dude won two races, hit the board six times, and earned $57,620, competing in Louisiana. Drive for Fun, a son of Distorted Humor, was more successful, winning three times and earning just under $200,000. But that wasn't enough to save either of them from being shipped from Evangeline Downs in May and ending up in a kill pen, the last step before crossing over the border to Mexico to be slaughtered. That's the fate of 20,000 American horses every year, an unknowable number of them...

Just days after announcing plans to loosen drug restrictions, the Louisiana State Racing Commission will hold an emergency meeting Tuesday, June 4 to discuss "Corrupt and Prohibited Practices". In a notice sent late Monday, the LSRC noted the following items as topics of discussion: Discussion of Clenbuterol Discussion of Depo-Medrol Safeguards will be in the place during transition time for going back to increased withdrawal periods. The state of Louisiana, which does not fall under HISA's control, passed a set of emergency rules set to go into effect June 8...

It was back in 2006 and Brian Hernandez, Jr. was mired in 12th place in the jockey standings at Churchill Downs with 14 wins. It wasn't that he had been a failure. He won an Eclipse Award in 2004 as the nation's top apprentice, winning 243 races that year. And before moving to the Kentucky circuit in 2006, he was among the top riders at Evangeline Downs and Delta Downs in his native Louisiana. It's just that Hernandez had larger goals and he was starting to worry they would never...

Races at Evangeline Downs and Horseshoe Indianapolis both went off without all horses being loaded into the starting gate on Wednesday. The fourth race at Evangeline Apr. 17, a mile route for $4,000 claimers, was declared a "no contest" by the stewards because multiple horses were involved. The $54,453 in mutuels for the race had to either be refunded or paid out as part of "all" combinations for that leg in multi-race exotics. Several hours earlier, the sixth race at Indy, a 5 1/2-furlong sprint for Indiana-bred maiden special weights,...

The Louisiana Thoroughbred Breeders Association will have a nearly $6,000,000 stakes schedule this year the LTBA announced Tuesday. Offered over 67 stakes races, of which 33 will offer a purse of over $100,000, the purses are part of a continuing program to support accredited Louisiana-breds along with incentives for breeders and stallion owners. "We are proud to offer a dynamic stakes program that provides a year-round schedule for Accredited Louisiana breds," said LTBA secretary-treasurer Roger Heitzmann III. "Our owners and trainers have found this to be a tremendous benefit, and...