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Denied Restraining Order, Hollendorfer Will Now Seek Injunction Against Santa Anita

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Attorney Drew Couto told the Daily Racing Form on Friday that he will be seeking a preliminary injunction against Santa Anita Park on behalf of his client, trainer Jerry Hollendorfer.

Banned from all Stronach Group-owned properties in late June, the trainer turned to the court system in order to race his horses at Santa Anita. Hollendorfer’s motion earlier this year for a temporary restraining order against the track was denied, meaning that his horses ran in the name of assistant trainer Dan Ward during its Autumn race meet.

Now, Couto will go the route of a preliminary injunction in an effort to allow Hollendorfer to race horses at Santa Anita’s Winter meet, which starts on Dec. 26. Hollendorfer has announced plans to move his 25-horse stable to Oaklawn Park for the winter, but a court ruling in his favor could alter those plans, said Couto.

Read more at drf.com.

The post Denied Restraining Order, Hollendorfer Will Now Seek Injunction Against Santa Anita appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

Woodbine Closing Out 2019 Season With Biggest Card In Its History

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This Sunday’s Thoroughbred card features 192 horses entered to compete in 16 races, making it the biggest card Woodbine Racetrack has held in its recent history.

Post-time for Sunday’s card is 1:05 p.m. ET and will have an average field size of 12 horses.

“Our race office has put together an exciting card with strong field sizes that we believe to be the biggest card we have ever held here at Woodbine Racetrack,” said Jonathan Zammit, Vice President of Thoroughbred Racing for Woodbine Entertainment. “It’s going to be an exciting day and the perfect way to close the 2019 Thoroughbred season at Woodbine.”

Headlining the card is the $125,000 Valedictory Stakes, a Grade 3 stakes race for three-year-olds and upward contested over 1-3/4 miles on the main track.

To complement the marathon race card, Woodbine Entertainment will be offering additional pools including two Pick 5s starting in Race 2 and 7, and three Pick 4s starting in Race 4, 9 and 13. The Power Pick 6 and Jackpot Hi 5 have mandatory payouts on Saturday and Sunday.

Sunday’s card also closes the career of Eurico Rosa da Silva, who announced early this year that he would be retiring at the end of the season. Da Silva has 10 mounts on Sunday and his final ride at Woodbine Racetrack will be in the 15th race. Da Silva currently leads all jockeys at Woodbine Racetrack with 178 wins this season.

The post Woodbine Closing Out 2019 Season With Biggest Card In Its History appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

Hollendorfer Hearing Set for Christmas Eve

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The hearing for Jerry Hollendorfer’s preliminary injunction against The Stronach Group so that the Hall of Famer can once again train and race at Santa Anita has been scheduled for Dec. 24 at the Los Angeles County Superior Court, according to the trainer’s attorney, Drew Couto.

Hollendorfer has not been permitted to race or train at Santa Anita since June, when Santa Anita management banned him from the facility after four Hollendorfer-trained horses were catastrophically injured this winter and spring during an overall spike in fatalities at the facility. At the same time in June, Hollendorfer was similarly barred from the TSG-owned Golden Gate Fields.

Throughout this period, Hollendorfer was welcomed at Los Alamitos racetrack, and in July, he won an injunction to race at Del Mar. The trainer, however, lost his September injunction against Golden Gate Fields. Earlier this month, Hollendorfer told the TDN that he will take a string this winter to Oaklawn Park.

Opening day for Santa Anita’s winter-spring meet is Dec. 26.

The post Hollendorfer Hearing Set for Christmas Eve appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

New PET Scan Unveiled at Santa Anita

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“I think when we’re done here, Santa Anita’s going to have the most advanced and comprehensive availability of tools in the imaging realm of anywhere in the world.”

These approbatory words, spoken by Craig Fravel, the freshly minted Chief Executive Officer, Racing Operations, at The Stronach Group (TSG), kicked off Friday’s press conference heralding the recent arrival at Santa Anita of the Longmile Positron Emission Tomography (MILE-PET) Scan machine–a newly developed piece of equipment with two important burdens to shoulder.

The first? Improve the early detection and diagnosis of potentially catastrophic injuries in racehorses. The other? Help rehabilitate the public image of a racetrack that has endured an Annus horribilis by any stretch of the imagination.

Indeed, it was back in May, during the height of the welfare crisis, TSG announced that it had invested $500,000 to purchase the machine.

“It’s exciting,” said Fravel, Friday. “Mostly, we’re excited for the benefits to the horses who perform here at Santa Anita, Del Mar and throughout California, in terms of what we think this will do for the long-term health and welfare of the animal.”

The press conference began outside the Southern California Equine Foundation (SCEF)-operated Nuclear Medicine Facility nestled in the barn area at Santa Anita. Besides Fravel, speakers included veterinarian Joe Dowd, president of the SCEF, which had invested another $250,000 of its own money in the technology.

“It’s a much higher resolution than we get with our regular nuclear scintigraphy imaging,” said Dowd, comparing the new PET technology to the widely used bone scan–a comparison he suggested was akin to trying to read with and without spectacles. “The original imaging is two dimensional. What the new PET scan allows is three-dimensional imaging. And we can actually visualize it on a computer screen.”

Mathieu Spriet, associate professor of Surgical and Radiological Sciences at the University of California Davis’s School of Veterinary Medicine, where the PET scan machine was developed, took up where Dowd left off.

“This is not something that happened overnight,” said Spriet, the brainchild behind the new technology. “We did the first PET scan on a horse at UC Davis over four years ago. We saw the potential, and I remember meeting with Dr. [Sue] Stover, discussing the initial findings. She was really excited about it–it was like finding gold,” Spriet added, before he led the assembled reporters inside for a live demonstration.

The way the MILE-PET-scan works is similar to a regular bone scan. A radioactive tracer is injected into the body, which will then light up under imaging any abnormal areas in the bone. But this particular machine resembles a basketball hoop hovering above the ground, with a quick-release mechanism in case the horse becomes fractious.

The hoop is able to slide up and down, in order to take images at different parts of the leg, each image taking approximately 3-4 minutes. “We’ve validated the scan all the way up to” and just over the knee, Spriet explained. And why the emphasis on the lower leg?

Studies have shown that pre-existing injuries which aren’t always clinically apparent are present in more than 85% of catastrophic breakdowns, with the fetlock proving to be the most common site of catastrophic injury. The proximal sesamoid bones within the fetlock are especially vulnerable. Injuries to these bones account for 50-60% of all musculoskeletal fractures, researchers have found.

Thanks to a Grayson-Jockey Club Research Foundation grant, Spriet has already imaged about 25 horses–20 of them at UC Davis along with five already at Santa Anita. He hopes to image about 200 horses in total within the first year. Each horse imaged will also have a bone scan taken, as a point of comparison. “We need to find what is a normal baseline for the racehorse,” Spriet explained.

As the press conference concluded, Southern California-based veterinarian Ryan Carpenter announced that the long-awaited standing magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) unit–funded in part with $450,000 from the Dolly Green Research Foundation–will arrive by the middle of January. Indeed, the press conference took place in front of a roughly 10′ x 10′ x 30′ slab of freshly poured concrete, onto which the unit will go.

“MRI is the gold standard in human orthopedics, so, if your favorite quarterback gets injured this Sunday, they’d be in for an MRI first thing Monday morning,” said Carpenter, before emphasizing how the MRI and PET diagnostic technologies will eventually complement one another.

“I think we’ll look back at this day and see that this was the day that set the tidal wave across the United States as just being the pinnacle of horse safety,” he added. “And it speaks to the commitment of The Stronach Group, the Dolly Green Research Foundation, and the Southern California Equine Foundation.”

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