Just eight days remain in the 2024 Woodbine Thoroughbred season and for many, no matter what side of the track they work on, the last day cannot come soon enough.
Winter hit hard this past week and bitterly cold temperatures have set in, making it tough on the humans and horses still trying to race and win.
The past week at Woodbine was unprecedented. The Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario directed Woodbine not to take entries for horses who raced less than 14 days prior. The ruling included additional rules about workouts for coming off the vet’s list, intra-arterial fetlock injections, and the presence of veterinarians.
The 14-day rule led to a rash of scratches for Saturday, Sunday and the Dec. 5 card drawn last Friday. In fact, there would be so many scratches for Thursday that the card was re-drawn on Sunday. There are seven races carded.
The weekend’s races went off well, including two major stakes races for two-year-olds, the Coronation Futurity and Princess Elizabeth, producing exciting finishes (although a great number of horsepeople wouldn’t mind if $250,000 stakes races were not held at the end of November when conditions are testing).
The AGCO noted that nine horses in the last few weeks were euthanized due to injuries on the track. Race-watchers also would note that half a dozen horses were eased in races and several had stumbling incidents, such as Sacred Dancer after the wire last Thursday.
On Sunday afternoon, Michael Copeland, President and CEO of Woodbine Entertainment, came on the simulcast channel to speak to the incidents.
“We are always focused on safety. We pride ourselves on having one of the very best safety records for our tracks. But when we have a situation like we’ve had the last few weeks it really causes us to take extra steps to say ‘How is this not something that repeats?'”
As far as the Tapeta track was concerned, Woodbine invited the makers of Tapeta to come and observe the surface and following several days of maintenance, the track was deemed in good condition. Indeed, Woodbine’s Tapeta has had a stellar record of safety since it was put in in 2016.
“Some of the issues we have had over the last few weeks are not track related,” said Copeland. “But it causes us to step back and say ‘what can we do about it?'”
Meanwhile, jockey RAFAEL HERNANDEZ had a five-win day on Sunday and took eight wins during the last four racing days. Hernandez won two yesterday on horses trained by Martin Drexler, who sent out five winners last week.
Drexler has 100 winners at the meet and is four away from matching a personal best.
Hernandez has 127 wins this season, second to Sahin Civaci who has 154. Those two are far in front of anyone else but FRASER AEBLY has moved into third in his first full season of riding at Woodbine. Aebly, who was an apprentice up to this summer, won five races last week to go to 68 wins.
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