Horse Racing News

Somali Lemonade wowed a drizzled Keeneland crowd of 8,608 with a sensational late run Thursday in winning the Jessamine Stakes, giving trainer Michael Matz a 2-year-old filly for the Breeders' Cup to go along with his BC Juvenile favorite, Union Rags.

A. U. Miner, who earned a second automatic berth in the Breeders' Cup Marathon by virtue of winning the Greenwood Cup July 16 at Parx Racing, has been disqualified from the first-place purse earned in that victory as a result of a positive drug finding.

Grade 1 winners Winter Memories and Summer Soiree will have their first meeting on Saturday when the pair line up as part of an eight-filly field in the Grade 1 , $400,000 Queen Elizabeth II Challenge Cup at Keeneland.

Midnight Interlude, the unluckiest of losers in two starts on the turf at Del Mar this summer, heads a field of 14 entered in the $150,000 Oak Tree Derby at Santa Anita Oct. 15.

Willcox Inn, who captured the first two legs of Arlington's Mid-America Triple over the summer, will seek to add to his trophy case in Saturday's Grade 3, $200,000 Hawthorne Derby.

The once-beaten Unbridled Humor will try to make it two Grade 3 wins in a row when she lines up Saturday for the $100,000 Athenia Stakes at Belmont Park, a 1 1/16-mile test over the Widener turf.

New York regulators revoked Rick Dutrow's license for at least 10 years and fined him $50,000 for what they said has been a pattern of rules violations by the controversial trainer.

Blind Luck, the reigning champion 3-year-old filly, will be among eight Grade 1-winning fillies on offer at Keeneland's November mixed sale, which starts Nov. 7.

California Flag became the first horse to win the Grade 3 Morvich Stakes three times when he took the latest edition of the Santa Anita race by a half-length over Excessive Passion in a furious finish Oct. 10.

A magnetic resonance imaging test taken Tuesday on the right arm of Julien Leparoux revealed no soft-tissue damage, which clears the 28-year-old jockey to continue riding this week at Keeneland Race Course.