Blood Horse

Award-winning author and attorney Milton Toby passed away Monday at his Georgetown, Kentucky home following a battle with cancer. He was 73. News of Toby's passing was first reported by Blood-Horse, where he worked for over a decade before beginning a freelance writing career. Toby began his sports writing career at the Aiken Standard and his first assignment for the South Carolina newspaper involved covering the 1972 GI Belmont S. He returned to Kentucky in 1973 and began a 12-year stint writing for the BloodHorse magazine. As a freelance photojournalist,...

Dan Mearns, the former managing editor of the Blood-Horse and the Thoroughbred Record, passed away Sunday, January 16 due to complications from Covid-19, according to his brother, Greg, who posed the news on Facebook. "Dear Friends of Dan," he wrote on Mearns's Facebook page. "This post is from his brother, Greg. I am heartbroken to report to you that Dan sadly and suddenly left us on Sunday, January 16, 2022 due to complications from Covid. His last communications with family were, `you don't want to get this,' and `make sure...

Hawthorne Race Course will not run a spring Thoroughbred meet in 2020 because the afternoon races will conflict with the large-scale reconstruction of the track's grandstand and clubhouse that will transform the plant into a racino. Earlier this summer, Illinois legalized slot machines, table games and sports betting at the state's commercial pari-mutuel tracks. The Blood-Horse first broke the story on Thursday, but TDN obtained additional details about the project from both Hawthorne and Illinois Thoroughbred Horsemen's Association (ITHA) officials. "The beginning of the construction is going to be in...