Things to know today
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Book 2 closed at Keeneland with 425 yearlings sold through the ring across its two sessions for 166,715,000 dollars, an average of 392,271 dollars, up 9 percent, and a median steady at 300,000 dollars. Twenty four made seven figures in the book against 18 a year ago, and 65 have now passed a million through four sessions, against last year’s full sale record of 56. The four day gross is 318,115,000 dollars and the buy back rate 30.06 percent, against 27.07 percent at the same stage in 2025. Three colts shared top billing at 2 million dollars each: a Not This Time colt out of Spell On You, a half sister to Justify, to Chad Summers for Al Gold from Glennwood Farm; a Not This Time colt out of the Kentucky Oaks winner Believe You Can, to Marette Farrell for Speedway Stable from Airdrie Stud; and a Nyquist colt out of Factorofwon, to St. Elias Stables, West Point Thoroughbreds, Lane’s End Racing and Belladonna Racing from Betz Thoroughbreds. Cormac Breathnach, Keeneland’s senior director of sales operations, called 318 million dollars through the ring in four days staggering, while noting the median and the RNA rate are not as strong as the house would like (Thoroughbred Daily News) |
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Sovereignty is jogging again after the foot abscess that kept the reigning Horse of the Year out of the Jockey Club Gold Cup. Bill Mott told the Daily Racing Form at Belmont on Thursday that the horse was jogging the previous day and again that morning, that everything looked good and that he might start galloping very soon, and that he could train up to the Breeders’ Cup Classic at Keeneland. The abscess developed on 4 September and cost him twelve days of training. He won the Whitney by four and three quarter lengths at Saratoga on 8 August (Paulick Report) |
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The Illinois Racing Board rejected 2027 race date applications from Hawthorne Race Course and Suburban Downs on Wednesday, a fortnight after the Stickney property was sold in bankruptcy proceedings and Hawthorne ceased racing there. Both had been notified of deficiencies and given time to respond, and the board found the applications remained deficient and did not comply with the Act or its rules. Hawthorne had sought thoroughbred dates from 27 March to 31 October and Suburban Downs standardbred dates from 2 January to 26 December. Neither company presented at the hearing. The fate of Hawthorne’s eleven off track betting shops, which are licensed annually and tied by statute to a racing operation, was not addressed (Paulick Report) |
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Two Colorado trainers and a jockey have served suspensions for possessing hypodermic syringes on the backstretch at Bally’s Arapahoe Park, on documents obtained under the state’s open records act. The thoroughbred trainer Mark Hibdon served one day after a search of his barn on 15 August and had ten entries scratched the following day, two of them in the Gold Rush Futurity. The quarter horse trainer Marla Dayana Vargas served fourteen days and paid a 500 dollar fine, and the quarter horse jockey Jonathan Dominguez served ten, both after a vehicle search at the backside gate the same day. Laboratory testing found the syringe contents to be vitamin and glucosamine, with nothing prohibited under Colorado rules. The track opted out of federal regulation for its 2026 mixed breed meet (Paulick Report) |
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The owner Mariah Guadalupe Gonzalez has been given a further eighteen month period of ineligibility, beginning 7 August 2027, after running two horses at Sunland Park on 9 February while serving an existing suspension. She did not respond to the procedural action over several months and the sanction was issued by default. In the same weekly list the trainer Guillermo Preciado drew a combined eighteen month and seven day ineligibility, a 13,500 dollar fine and two penalty points over a banned stimulant and a controlled antihistamine, and the trainer Cathal A. Lynch a seven day ineligibility and a 1,000 dollar fine. Five further cases are listed as pending, among them one involving the trainer Brad Cox. No finding has been made in those and no hearing has concluded (Thoroughbred Daily News) |
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A 25,000 dollar claim made six years ago has produced an 850,000 dollar yearling for the owner and trainer Sam Wilensky. He claimed the Into Mischief mare Drop a Hint as a three year old out of Todd Pletcher’s barn in 2020, raced her to a win in the 2022 Minaret Stakes, and her Cody’s Wish colt sold from the Lane’s End consignment in Book 1 at Keeneland to Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners, Bridlewood Farm and Robert LaPenta. Wilensky, who keeps ten to twelve horses in training at a time, said he had thought 400,000 or 500,000 dollars would be a hell of a day, and that it still had not settled in. The mare has a Flightline colt at foot and is in foal to Sierra Leone (Thoroughbred Daily News) |
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Randy Klopp trained his thousandth winner on Wednesday at Horseshoe Indianapolis, where 639 of them have come, when the Indiana bred Vino Rosso colt Rosso Fuoco won the opening race by eight lengths under Joe Ramos. The Connersville native started under his stepfather Walter Abner and took out his licence in 1992, and has won four of the last five training titles at the track. He said the milestone is not about the trainer but a team effort, that you have to rely on your workers, owners, jockeys and agents, and that the owners would not let him forget it was coming (Paulick Report) |
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