Month: September 2022

Letter to the Editor: Happy 90th Birthday to JoAn Stewart

Throughout your life, there are people who make it better.

In 1964, when I moved to New Orleans to live with my soon-to-be adoptive mother, Marie Krantz, the caretakers of the Old Jefferson Downs were Jimmy and JoAn Stewart. The old Jefferson Downs was the converted Magnolia Park Harness track in Metairie (now Lafreniere Park). Jimmy had retired from race-riding and had a trainer's license with some good clients. It was summer and the camp bus would drop me off at the Caretakers Cottage on the grounds. JoAn would babysit me until the business day was over and it was time to go home. Fair Grounds Head Clocker and linemaker Mike Diliberto was another one of her clients. If you are from New Orleans, you knew Mike's dad Buddy as a sports reporting icon in the city. The Dilibertos lived down the street and Mike grew up with JoAn's sons.

After her stint at Jefferson Downs, she found work with the Louisiana HBPA and later at Fair Grounds. She handled Clubhouse Box sales and became the VIP Relations liaison. She was there through at least three regime changes. She raised several generations of racetrackers. Probably her favorites were Jack Van Berg and Billy Mott. You can include Al Stall Jr and Tommy Amoss in the next generation to come along.

Through all the chapters of my life, JoAn has been a constant. She has always been dressed in style and poised in every situation. In racing, she knew all the horsemen and all the customers and everyone felt like they were her best friend.

 

Her group of Lou Ladato, Edna Cardon and Sadie Marcello attended the Kentucky Derby for years and held court with all of their friends from across racing. If you were lucky, they would tell you what horse Bonny Holthus gave them out of Bob's entries that was the most live.

Her 90th birthday was Thursday. She has outlived her three sons and most of her friends. She has been living in suburban Atlanta for nearly 15 years.

JoAn doesn't do tech of any kind: no cell phone, no email, no social media. If you have time, drop her a birthday card or a note at:

JoAn Stewart

473 Silverleaf Lane

Dallas, GA 30157

–Bryan G Krantz, President, Krantz Commercial Services, LLC

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Magical Metal? Searching For Solutions To Equine Antifungal Resistance

Fungal infections, like their bacterial counterparts, are rapidly becoming resistant to the majority of antifungal medications. Metal-containing compounds are currently being investigated for their potential as antifungal drugs, but they must overcome their negative reputation first.

The Community for Open Antimicrobial Drug Discovery (CO-ADD) has been founded to encourage the development of new antifungal and antibacterial compounds that may solve the resistance conundrum and keep people – and horses—healthy. Based at the University of Queensland in Australia, the organization allows chemists from around the world the opportunity to test any chemical compound against bacteria and fungi at no cost.

Dr. Angelo Frei, with the Department of Chemistry, Biochemistry and Pharmacy at the University of Bern, found that 21 specific metal compounds showed activity against multiple resistant fungal strains. The metals included cobalt, nickel, rhodium, palladium, silver, europium, iridium, platinum, molybdenum, and gold.

Metals have a negative reputation in human medicine, despite their use in many treatments, including in Cisplatin, a widely used anti-cancer drug. 

The most active metal compounds were then tested on the larvae of a wax moth. Just one of the 11 metal compounds tested showed signs of toxicity to the larvae. The next phase of the trial showed that one compound was effective in reducing a fungal infection in larvae, making its possible use as an antifungal one step closer to fruition.

Frei hopes that the work done at CO-ADD will help broaden the search for new antifungal and antimicrobials, encouraging scientists and research groups to investigate the use of metals in medical applications.

Read more here.

The post Magical Metal? Searching For Solutions To Equine Antifungal Resistance appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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Turfway Msw Purses Rise Again, to $70k from $62k

Turfway Park purses for maiden special weight (MSW) races are projected to rise to $70,000 for the dovetailed dual meets that will span Nov. 30, 2022, through Apr. 1, 2023.

Chip Bach, Turfway's general manager, reported the projection during the Sept. 28 Kentucky Thoroughbred Development Fund (KTDF) advisory board meeting. He also disclosed that Kentucky's recently rebuilt winter racing venue–with its new grandstand and updated stabling–will be shifting Saturday post times from early evenings to afternoons this season.

Bach said Turfway will card 24 total stakes worth $4.35 million in purses over the course of its holiday (19 dates over Nov. 30-Dec. 31) and winter/spring (48 dates over Jan. 1-Apr. 1) meets.

Turfway's signature race, the GIII Jeff Ruby Steaks S., will see a purse boost from $600,000 to $700,000, Bach said, noting that management is “not only adding stakes, but we're also putting a little bit more meat on the bone for those stakes as well.”

Night racing will remain a staple at Turfway on Wednesdays through Fridays, with an expected 6:15 p.m. first post, Bach said. The afternoon post time for Saturdays is listed as 12:45 p.m. on Turfway's website.

Rick Hiles, the president of the Kentucky Horsemen's Benevolent and Protective Association, expressed a minor quibble with the timing of the first races on the evening cards. He said 5:30 p.m., which had been used in previous years, worked much better for both patrons “and the horsemen shipping, especially in inclement weather.”

Bach promised he'd look into a possible change to 5:30 p.m. But he added that “Turfway has changed. I can't base things on what happened six or seven years ago, because we had some really tough racing going on there. We used to really get killed in those first two races, going up against a lot of tracks that were going on at that time.”

However, Bach also stated that Turfway's quality of racing has evolved to a point where it might be better able to withstand the competition in that tight bridge-signal simulcast window.

“I think our product, it should be very good right now,” Bach said. “Again, that's why we're stepping into the afternoons on Saturday. We feel we can compete. It's going to take some time to win back some of the handicappers out there that aren't used to seeing us during the day. But I think we have a great opportunity to get back to where we were.”

Last season, Turfway paid out $62,000 in MSW purses. The dual meets were conducted with temporary trackside amenities as the multi-year grandstand rebuild was nearing completion.

The previous season of 2020-21, Turfway paid just $32,000 for MSW races, and the dual meets were heavily compromised by both the COVID-19 pandemic and the initial phases of the grandstand rebuild that kept the northern Kentucky oval closed to on-track spectators.

During the 2019-20 season, Turfway paid MSW purses in the $46,000-$48,000 range.

Separately, Austin Schmitt, the vice president of finance at Churchill Downs Racetrack, told KTDF board members that for his track's November meet, “Our purse levels per race type are planned to be similar as we are executing upon in September, so our [MSW races] are about $120,000.”

The post Turfway Msw Purses Rise Again, to $70k from $62k appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

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