California Horse Racing Board

It was déjà vu all over again at June's California Horse Racing Board (CHRB) meeting. Three months after a contentious meeting that saw board members vote unanimously to give race dates to Pleasanton Racetrack for a Thoroughbred meet this fall (in opposition to the wishes of Southern California track operators), the CHRB wrestled with another weighty conundrum: How to fund horse racing in California for the next fiscal year. Ultimately, the board approved what was termed a "compromise" funding model that will see each racing association cover the "direct costs"...

Trainer Richard Baltas has lost his petition for a writ of mandate against the California Horse Racing Board (CHRB), ending a legal tussle stemming from multiple charges of administering race-day supplements to his horses at Santa Anita in the spring of 2022. In a ruling publicly posted in early December of 2022, the CHRB handed Baltas a one-year suspension and a $10,000 fine for the alleged race-day administration of substances to his horses more than 20 times over roughly a three-week span the prior spring, and captured on surveillance video....

Hall of Fame jockey Kent Desormeaux rode for the first time in a decade at Gulfstream Park on Friday, and made the trip worth his while when piloting Lady Cha Cha (Vino Rosso) to a victory for trainer Laura Cazares in the afternoon's featured seventh race. "All credit to the horse. What a nice filly," the three-time Eclipse Award-winning jockey told the Gulfstream notes team. "Thank you to Laura. I've never met her, but she put me on her horses today. I appreciate the opportunity." The 54-year-old rode two horses...

In the wake of news that seven racehorses at properties under the jurisdiction of the California Horse Racing Board (CHRB) died in March, several commissioners and staffers at Thursday's monthly board meeting raised the verbal equivalent of a yellow flag with the goal of preventing future fatalities that would equate to a spike into red-alert territory. "Our injury rate, death rate, is creeping up," chairman Gregory Ferraro, DVM, said after CHRB equine medical director Jeff Blea gave the statistics in his report. "Do you have any solutions, reasons, comments about...

In the latest detour in the exhaustive legal saga stemming from Justify's 2018 GI Santa Anita Derby win, the connections of the horse during his racing career filed a notice last week with the California Horse Racing Board (CHRB) requesting that the agency entertain an appeal of a recent board of stewards decision disqualifying the horse from the race and to stay the purse distribution. In response, the CHRB have denied a stay of the stewards' decision but stated that it will "assign a Hearing Officer in this matter where...

The long-standing saga of the 2018 GI Santa Anita Derby may finally be at a close, as the $1-million purse was formally redistributed Saturday, according to a report in Daily Racing Form. Undefeated Triple Crown winner Justify (Scat Daddy) won the 2018 Santa Anita Derby, but later tested positive for scopolamine and Mick Ruis, owner of the second-place finisher Bolt d'Oro (Medaglia d'Oro), persevered with his attempts to have the results overturned. More on the background of his efforts can be found here. This past December, Ruis released a statement...

The California Horse Racing Board (CHRB) voted 6-0 on Thursday to approve a dates package for the back half of 2024 that will establish the current fairs-meet-only track at Pleasanton as the new crux of a Northern California circuit. The entire state has been trying to come to grips with the looming June 9 closure of Golden Gate Fields, the lone commercial track in the region, and the Mar. 21 vote by the CHRB was viewed as a NorCal racing lifeline by the estimated 250 supporters in attendance. Those very...

Ahead of a critical California Horse Racing Board (CHRB) meeting Thursday to decide essentially whether or not to give Northern California stakeholders a fighting chance to build a circuit in the void left by the imminent closure of Golden Gate Fields, 1/ST Racing and Gaming set out their stall Tuesday in a letter to the regulator urging them to decline race dates to the North. In a proposal to the state regulator, the California Association of Racing Fairs (CARF) outlined a 10-week meeting this year that would run from Oct....

1/ST Racing, the owners of Santa Anita, have threatened to close or sell the "Great Race Place," making the threats on the eve of a critical meeting of the California Horse Racing Board (CHRB) in which the future of racing in the northern half of the state will be decided. Santa Anita has been calling for racing to shut down in the North, which, it believes, will help strengthen racing at Santa Anita and the other Southern California tracks. The story was first reported by John Cherwa in the Los...

Three months after a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge ordered the California Horse Racing Board (CHRB) to set aside a 2020 stewards' decision and issue a new ruling disqualifying winner Justify from the 2018 GI Santa Anita Derby, a separate settlement has been reached that calls for the CHRB to pay $300,000 to Mick Ruis, the owner of runner-up Bolt d'Oro, and to order a redistribution for the $1-million purse of that stakes. Dick Downey of the Blood-Horse was first to report the settlement on Thursday, citing details made...

Last June, Pat Cummings, executive director of the National Thoroughbred Alliance and former executive director of the Thoroughbred Idea Foundation, issued a stark warning about the encroaching impacts from Computer Assisted Wagering (CAW) to the men and women trying to forge a living through horse racing in the Golden State. CAW players constitute a small group of mostly anonymous, high-volume gamblers with an outsized impact on the betting markets--including in California--due to their use of sophisticated wagering technologies and the inducements offered to them in the form of attractive rates...

The Santa Anita stewards on Sunday issued trainer Dan Blacker a 90-day suspension and a $15,000 fine for 527 separate incidents of failing to undertake the necessary pre-workout veterinary examination reporting process for horses in his care. The three-month suspension is scheduled to run from Feb. 26, 2024, to May 25, 2024. During that time, Blacker will be denied access to all licensed premises in California. Last October, the California Horse Racing Board (CHRB) charged Blacker with failing to comply with regulations requiring that a horse undergoes a veterinary exam...