trainer

The legal fallout from The Stronach Group's (TSG) decision to ban trainer Jerry Hollendorfer from its facilities in June of 2019 moved onto the San Diego County Superior Court earlier this month, with a hearing in the case between the trainer and the California Horse Racing Board (CHRB). The hearing Oct. 8 concerned two writs of mandate that Hollendorfer filed against the CHRB constituting an oftentimes complicated and convoluted legal knot essentially surrounding which entity--the tracks or the state agency--have the ultimate jurisdiction to bar the trainer from participating in...

Trainer Todd Pletcher joined this week's TDN Writers' Room presented by Keeneland to discuss his impressive contingent preparing for the Breeders' Cup.

Whit Beckman would be the first to admit that his stable did not get off to the remarkably-fast start he had dreamed of when he first set out on his own last fall. Going into this summer, he had just two wins on his training record. But, the pieces have fallen into place in the past two months as Beckman has sent five horses to the winner's circle, including three in just the past two weeks. Sabalenka (Good Samaritan) leads the charge of recent winners for Beckman and now looks...

Longtime Northern California trainer Duane Offield passed away on Thursday after a lengthy illness. He was 82-years-old. Offield began his training career in 1976 and saddled 721 winners from 8,038 starters, with lifetime purse earnings of $10,009,202. His most significant win came in the 1990 GI Haskell Invitational S. at Monmouth Park with Restless Con. Services are pending. "Our racing community here at Golden Gate will greatly miss Duane Offield," said Golden Gate Fields Vice President and General Manager David Duggan. "Duane was a soft-spoken man who simply loved coming...

SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY - Here we are on the final weekend of the Saratoga season and--no surprise--D. Wayne Lukas is ready to take swings in both of the historic Grade I races for 2-year-olds. The Hall of Fame trainer, who turned 87 Friday, will saddle Holy Cow Stable's Naughty Gal (Into Mischief) Sunday in the GI Spinaway S. The next afternoon, Lukas will send out BC Stable's Bourbon Bash (City of Light) and Western Ghent (American Pharoah) in the GI Hopeful, the final stake of the 154th season of Saratoga...

Four years ago on the eve of the GI TVG Pacific Classic, the hunt for the heavy favorite amid the lettered labyrinth of Del Mar's backstretch ended at Barn J. The stall, of course, belonged to Accelerate (Lookin At Lucky), a sleek, shiny copper penny of a colt, who carried weighty expectations that this was the year his trainer, John Sadler, would finally shrug off the voodoo that had cursed his previous attempts at the coveted prize. It was also viewed as a new high altitude for a horse whose...

Trainer Penny Pearce has been issued a suspension of 1,950 days and fined $23,500 by the Pennsylvania Racing Commission after six horses under her care tested positive for clenbuterol during out-of-competition tests. The penalties were announced after her barn at Parx was inspected June 22. During the inspection, investigators also found hypodermic needles, syringes and injectable substances. The suspension is scheduled to run from Sept. 11, 2022 through Jan. 12, 2028. The Paulick Report was first with the story and has also reported that Pearce has filed an appeal. Pearce...

Newmarket may be known for its dominant stables that currently house headline names such as Baaeed (GB), Stradivarius (Ire) and Alpinista (GB), but the town is also home to a large number of smaller yards, and the newest trainer to join the town's ranks is Dylan Cunha. The South African is new to Britain but he is not new to training. In his home country he won the G1 Steinhoff International Summer Cup with Strategic News (Aus) (Strategic {Aus}) in 2007. To include him within our Local Heroes series is...

In 1993, Michelle Lovell rode five races at Saratoga. Then known as jockey Michelle Hanley, she came home with three second-place finishes, but never got that win at the Spa. Twenty-nine years later, she finally made it to the winner's circle. This time it was with the brilliant GII Saratoga Special S. winner Damon's Mound (Girvin), her first Saratoga starter as a trainer. How do the two experiences compare? "Riding here back in the day, I was just super in awe of the place," Lovell explained. "Obviously who wouldn't want...

Take the time to read colleague Dan Ross's extensive and detailed story on the sordid career of trainer Burton Sipp and you might conclude that, in horse racing, enough is never enough. The story is about a lot more than the many controversies that have shadowed Sipp throughout his career, it is about how racing somehow always let Sipp back in, to give him a third chance, a fourth, fifth chance. It is about the sport's inability to police itself and its failure to permanently ban someone who has no...

The Far Hills steeplechase race meet will honor the late John Forbes--a fixture at Monmouth Park where he trained for 40 years--with the first John Forbes Memorial Race during its six-race program Oct. 15. The 101st Far Hills Race Meeting will offer $575,000 in purses for the six races at Moorland Farm in Far Hills, N.J., highlighted by the $250,000 Grade 1 Grand National. The John Forbes Memorial, the only flat race on the program, will be contested at two miles on the turf. It will go as the final...

Brad Cox joined this week's TDN Writers' Room to recap Cyberknife's victory in the GI Haskell and discuss his graded stakes entries for this weekend.