Kentucky Horse Racing Commission
Our sport can, and should, always seek continuous improvement. Take last Saturday, [May 23]'s first race at Churchill Downs as an example. Trainer Thomas Drury Jr. had two starters in the race--Step Ten, making his career debut and Baby White Sox, who would make his first start for Drury, but his third start overall, having run twice for Joe Sharp in 2019, the last of those starts coming in mid-September. While Step Ten is shown as having five published works, one most recently at Churchill and four at the Skylight...
Thursday was supposed to be opening day at Keeneland's spring meet, which has been canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead, officials who oversee the association's racecourse and sales company spent their afternoon on a video conference call with the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission (KHRC)'s race dates advisory committee explaining how Keeneland will face a situation that is markedly different from the state's other four Thoroughbred tracks when emergency public health mandates are relaxed enough to allow live racing to resume. Bob Elliston, Keeneland's vice president of racing and sales,...
Even as rival owners of horses that finished behind Maximum Security (New Year's Day) are threatening legal action to get the allegedly doped 3-year-old champ disqualified from previous wins, Gary and Mary West are forging ahead with their 10-month federal court odyssey to overturn the controversial GI Kentucky Derby stewards' in-race interference DQ that stripped their colt of the honor, prestige and prize money of America's most important horse race. "But for the stewards' nonfeasance and misfeasance, Maximum Security would have been declared the official winner, and Plaintiffs would have...
Three more Joe Sharp horses have been disqualified from purse money for testing positive for the drug levamisole, this time in Kentucky, according to a report in Daily Racing Form. The news comes after nine Sharp horses were DQ'ed for the same drug in Louisiana earlier this year. Sharp previously said that he had five horses test positive for the drug last fall at Churchill and was awaiting word from Churchill stewards on the matter. Levamisole is listed as a Class 2 drug by the Association of Racing Commissioners International,...
It's no secret that racing had a tough year in 2019. We asked a cross-section of participants what their number one goal is to make racing better in 2020. (Want to participate? Email suefinley@thetdn.com) PATRICK CUMMINGS, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, THOROUGHBRED IDEA FOUNDATION Despite the raft of negativity that has surrounded the sport in North America, racing on this continent suffers from a general malaise that can best be described as follows--we simply don't take our sport seriously enough. If we did, many of our smaller problems, head-scratching status-quo situations or even...
The Retired Racehorse Project (RRP) announced a full slate of new and returning special awards that will be offered at the 2019 Thoroughbred Makeover, presented by Thoroughbred Charities of America. The 2019 Thoroughbred Makeover takes place October 2-5 at the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington, KY. The Kentucky Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders, Inc. (KTOB) are sponsoring a $6,500 cash prize for the highest-placed Kentucky-bred at the competition. The prize will be split in the event of a tie. "We are pleased to support this popular event which reinforces the market...
According to published reports, the U.S. Labor Department has filed a lawsuit against trainer Steve Asmussen alleging that, since 2012, the trainer's KDE Equine has not paid Churchill Downs stable workers overtime and has failed to keep proper employment records regarding wages paid and hours worked. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Louisville, KY. "They just have a fundamental misunderstanding, honestly, of the hours that these folks work and how they're paid," Asmussen's attorney Clark Brewster told Louisville Courier-Journal. "And even if they were correct in their...