Santa Anita

Graded races at Santa Anita and Gulfstream Park have been renamed in honor of the late trainers D. Wayne Lukas and Christophe Clement, 1ST, which operates both racetracks, announced Wednesday. Beginning in 2026, the GII Santa Monica Stakes at Santa Anita will be renamed the D. Wayne Lukas Stakes, while the GIII La Prevoyante Stakes at Gulfstream Park has been renamed the Christophe Clement Stakes. "D. Wayne Lukas and Christophe Clement were not just generational horsemen, they were top-class people," said 1/ST President Aidan Butler. "Santa Anita and Gulfstream were...

Former WinStar stallion Congrats (A.P. Indy--Praise, by Mr. Prospector) passed away Monday at the age of 25. The news was confirmed by Scott Kintz who heads Six K's Training & Sales at Florida's Woodford Thoroughbreds where the pensioned stallion retired in 2021. A GSW/MGISP son of A.P. Indy, Congrats won the 2005 GII San Pasqual Handicap and earned placings in the GI Santa Anita Handicap and the GI Hollywood Gold Cup Handicap while also finishing fifth behind Roses In May (Devil His Due) in the 2005 G1 Emirates Airline Dubai...

Santa Anita Park will offer seven automatic qualifiers for this year's Breeders' Cup races among the 22 stakes races offered during the 2025 Autumn Meet that begins on Friday, Sept. 26. The seven Breeders' Cup Challenge races are slated to be run the first two weeks of the 16-day meet. The late California owner-breeder John C. Harris will be honored with the renaming of the GIII John Harris Stakes to be run on Saturday, Sept. 27. The John C. Harris Stakes will be for 3-year-old fillies on Santa Anita Park's...

MGISW Raging Torrent (Maximus Mischief--Violet Wave, by Violence), whose strong resume made him the leading miler on dirt in North America, is likely to be retired from racing after being diagnosed with a suspensory injury to his left foreleg according to his co-owner Craig Dado. The news was first reported by the Daily Racing Form's Steve Andersen on Saturday evening. The 4-year-old is campaigned by Dado's Great Friends Racing and Yuesheng Zhang. According to trainer Doug O'Neill Sunday, the injury occurred after the GI Hill 'n' Dale Metropolitan Mile at...

SARATOGA SPRINGS--When Neil Poznansky, sitting on the back of GI Kentucky Derby and GI Belmont Stakes champion Sovereignty (Into Mischief), saw jockey Junior Alvarado early Friday morning, he wore a wide smile. "How'd I do?" Poznansky said. Alvarado grinned back. No answer necessary. Sovereignty did what Poznansky, Alvarado and Hall of Fame trainer Bill Mott wanted to see as he had his second work since winning the Belmont last month. Working in company with 4-year-old stablemate Jefferson Street (Street Sense), Sovereignty and Poznansky, Mott's assistant, covered four furlongs in :48.99...

Over the 30 years former trainer Mike Machowsky spent plying his trade with stopwatch and condition book, his constant companion was the doughty California-bred. A Cal-bred helped launch his career-Native Boundary, who showed class and grit aplenty over three years and 22 starts. Only the Bobby Frankel-trained Eternity Star stood between him and the 1991 G1 Hollywood Derby. Later in Machowsky's career, the wily Cal-bred Caracortado stamped his mark over several seasons on some of the West Coast's most illustrious slug-fests over a mile. As Fasig-Tipton's California representative-a position he...

The Ed Brown Society and 1/ST are now in the fourth year of their partnership and during that time, five Ed Brown Scholars (undergraduates) and three Ed Brown Fellows (post-graduates), have completed spring internships, 1/ST said via a Thursday press release. The Spring 2025 cohort included Ed Brown Fellow Joshua "JC" Berry and Ed Brown Scholar Chris Morales--both Louisville, Kentucky natives with limited prior exposure to the Thoroughbred industry. The experience allowed Berry and Morales to see firsthand how various departments at Gulfstream, Santa Anita and Pimlico operated. The pair...

The 2025 renewal of the Tokyo City Cup at Santa Anita will be contested as a non-listed Black-Type event, according to a Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association release Monday. Formerly a Grade III, the race has been downgraded since the distance was changed from 12 furlongs to eight furlongs. According to the TOBA grading committee, the race is considered a new race and must be run twice at its new distance as a non-listed Black-Type race before being eligible for grading.

The California Horse Racing Board (CHRB) on Thursday voted down two separate proposals to allocate 2025 race dates to entities at Ferndale and Fresno that wanted to keep Thoroughbred racing going on the now-nonexistent Northern California circuit. The 4-3 votes on each measure dashed what appeared to be the last remaining hopes for a 2025 resuscitation of the sport in a region of the state that as recently as two summers ago boasted a year-round rotation of racing anchored by one commercial track and five fair venues. The June 19...

The 29-day Santa Anita Hollywood Meet wrapped up Sunday with Antonio Fresu winning the jockey's title, Phil D'Amato as top trainer and Nick Alexander as leading owner. For Fresu, this was his first jockey's title at Santa Anita. The 33-year-old native of Italy has been riding in the U.S., specifically the Southern California circuit, since April 2023. Fresu ended the Hollywood Meet with 34 wins from 152 mounts (22%) to finish four wins clear of runner-up Juan Hernandez. Fresu also had five stakes wins to lead all jockeys. At last...

The six-month Winter/Spring meeting at Santa Anita Park in Arcadia, California, closed Sunday, June 15, with 'encouraging' gains in handle, field size and on-track attendance, according to a release from the track. With over 6,800 horses having raced during the meet and more than 375,000 training sessions on the main and synthetic tracks having taken place, track officials report a safety mark of 99.98%, cementing its status as the safest track in North America among those with a comparable volume of racing and training. "This year was a transitional one...

4th-Santa Anita, $67,000, Alw, 6-14, 3yo, f, 1mT, 1:33.35, fm, 5 3/4 lengths. THOUGHT PROCESS (f, 3, Collected--Creative Thinking {SW-US, SP-Can, $132,592}, by Creative Cause) gave the legendary breeding operation of the late Brereton C. Jones another advertisement a short time before Fondly (Upstart) wired the field in the GIII Delaware Oaks. A debut third over the Del Mar main track last July, the chestnut rattled off three straight turf miles, including the Sept. 7 Del Mar Juvenile Fillies Turf and this track's GIII Surfer Girl Stakes Oct. 6. A...