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Evangeline Downs
Evangeline Downs Racetrack & Casino is a racetrack in St. Landry Parish, Louisiana, just east of Opelousas. It is owned and operated by Boyd Gaming. With a one-mile oval track, the facility provides close to 1,000 horse stalls for Thoroughbred flat racing and American Quarter Horse racing. The original track opened on April 28, 1966 at Carencro, Louisiana and remained there until 2005 when it moved to Opelousas, Louisiana. History On April 28, 1966, Evangeline Downs opened for business in its original location along U.S. Highway 167 (also known as the Evangeline Thruway, and today as Interstate Highway 49) at Carencro, Louisiana, just north of the city limits of Lafayette, Louisiana. In 1982, Rodney Verret, Ted Haik, Sam Rankin, and Joe Jones bought the track for $12.4 million. In 1985, they sold it to Norman Denny and Larry Willis for $16.5 million. Denny and Willis soon ran into financial problems. After a missed payment of purse money, the Louisiana Racing Commission thre ...
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Racino
A racino is a combined race track and casino. In some cases, the gambling is limited to slot machines, but many locations are beginning to include table games such as blackjack, poker, and roulette. In 2003, Joe Bob Briggs described the economic motivation of race track owners to convert into racinos: :Horse racing and dog racing have been in a slow decline for almost 20 years now....the only tracks that have really thrived are the ones that have slot machines. In many cases their live handle (the daily amount bet at the track by live customers) has continued to decline, but their revenues have shot up so fast that they're able to offer the biggest purses and thereby attract the best horses. Tracks like Delaware Park and West Virginia's Mountaineer Park, once considered places where local degenerates bet on broken-down nags in claiming races, are now among the wealthiest tracks around, with the best races. Fabled tracks like Pimlico, on the other hand, sometimes have trouble ...
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Regis Prograis
Regis Prograis ( ; born January 24, 1989) is an American professional boxer. He has held the WBC super lightweight title since November 2022, and previously the WBA super lightweight title in 2019. As of February 2021, he is ranked as the world's third best active light welterweight by the Transnational Boxing Rankings Board, second best by '' The Ring'' magazine and fourth best by BoxRec. Prograis currently has an 84.6% knockout-to-win ratio. Prograis chose his nickname, " Rougarou", Louisiana French for 'werewolf', to pay homage to his grandfather, who is of Native American descent. Amateur career Prograis is of Louisiana Creole descent and originally from New Orleans. Hurricane Katrina forced him to relocate in 2005 to Houston, Texas, where he began training at Savannah Boxing Club alongside Evander Holyfield which was a key factor in motivating him to take boxing seriously. He went on to build an 87-7 amateur record. As an amateur, Prograis was ranked #4 in the United Stat ...
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Horse Racing Venues In Louisiana
The horse (''Equus ferus caballus'') is a domesticated, one-toed, hoofed mammal. It belongs to the taxonomic family Equidae and is one of two extant subspecies of ''Equus ferus''. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature, ''Eohippus'', into the large, single-toed animal of today. Humans began domesticating horses around 4000 BCE, and their domestication is believed to have been widespread by 3000 BCE. Horses in the subspecies ''caballus'' are domesticated, although some domesticated populations live in the wild as feral horses. These feral populations are not true wild horses, as this term is used to describe horses that have never been domesticated. There is an extensive, specialized vocabulary used to describe equine-related concepts, covering everything from anatomy to life stages, size, colors, horse markings, markings, horse breed, breeds, horse gait, locomotion, and behavior. Horses are Cursorial, adapted to run, a ...
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Ray Sibille
Raymond Frederick Sibille (born September 13, 1952, in Sunset, Louisiana) is a retired American Thoroughbred horse racing jockey. In a career that spanned thirty-five years, he rode his first winner on June 29, 1969, at Evangeline Downs in Carencro, Louisiana. In 1973, he moved to compete at the Chicago-area tracks, where he won riding titles at Arlington Park, Hawthorne Race Course, and Sportsman's Park Racetrack. In 1981, he relocated to Southern California, where he won numerous top races. In 1988, trainer Thad Ackel hired him as the regular rider for Great Communicator, and Sibille met his greatest success that year, winning major races such as the Hollywood Turf Cup Stakes, San Juan Capistrano, San Luis Obispo, and San Marcos Handicaps before capping off the year with a win in the Breeders' Cup Turf In 1993, Sibille returned to race in Chicago, where he competed until retiring on July 24, 2004. On November 8, 2004, the Illinois House of Representatives recognized his disti ...
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Shane Sellers
Shane Jude Sellers (born September 24, 1966 in Erath, Louisiana) is an American Thoroughbred horse racing jockey. At age eleven, he began working around horses and in 1983 rode his first winner at Evangeline Downs. Sellers won several national riding championships and was a leading rider at Arlington Park. Over his career, he rode in the Kentucky Derby 14 consecutive times, with his best finish a third with Wild Gale in 1993. The two took third again that year in the Belmont Stakes. He rode 29 thoroughbreds in the Breeders Cup races, with two wins in 1997 and 1998, however one of his most exciting wins had to be his ride of Skip Away over the great Cigar in the Jockey Club Gold Cup in 1996. During his career Shane Sellers won more than 4,000 races and earned purses worth more than $122 million. Advertising controversy Shane Sellers was also one of the first of five top jockeys to wear advertising patches in the Kentucky Derby, starting in 2004. They sued on First Ame ...
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Randy Romero
Randy Paul Romero (December 22, 1957 – August 29, 2019) was a National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame, Hall of Fame jockey in the sport of Thoroughbred horse racing. Born into a family involved with horses, his father Lloyd J. Romero was a Louisiana State police, state trooper who horse trainer, trained American Quarter Horses and later, after a drunk driver crashed into his police car and permanently disabled him, he began training Thoroughbreds for flat racing. The 1978 movie ''Casey's Shadow'' is based on Lloyd Romero and his family. He was elected into the Thoroughbred Racing Hall of Fame May 27, 2010. Career In 1975, Romero began his professional riding career at Evangeline Downs in Lafayette, Louisiana. Nicknamed the "Ragin' Cajun", in 1983 at Oaklawn Park racetrack in Arkansas Romero suffered a near career-ending injury when he received major burns to two-thirds of his body from a freak fire that erupted while taking a sauna. He had rubbed himself down with alcohol ...
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Mark Guidry
Mark Guidry (born August 6, 1959, in Lafayette, Louisiana) is a former American jockey. He ranks 22nd among jockeys in career wins with 5,222 wins as of March 7, 2014, the date of his last ride. He subsequently announced his retirement from riding to become a jockey's agent. This was Guidry's second retirement. He initially retired in 2007 and did not ride again for 4 more years. Career He began his riding career in Thoroughbred horse racing in his native Louisiana in 1974 at the age of 15 where he remained until 1986 when he went to race in Illinois. He earned the moniker "King of Chicago" in the 1990s, by leading jockeys in wins at Hawthorne Race Course seven times, Sportsman's Park nine times, two times at Arlington Park. He also captured the 2005 riding title at Churchill Downs. Guidry earned his 5,000th career win at Churchill Downs on May 4, 2007, before retiring for the first time later that year. One of his first stakes wins as a jockey was at the age of 15 in 1974 i ...
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Kent Desormeaux
Kent Jason Desormeaux (born February 27, 1970) is an American thoroughbred horse racing Hall of Fame jockey who holds the U.S. record for most races won in a single year with 598 wins in 1989. He has won the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes three times each, and the Belmont Stakes once. Aboard Real Quiet, he lost the 1998 Triple Crown by a nose. Background From a Cajun family, Desormeaux grew up in a rural farming area located a few miles outside Maurice, Louisiana. His brother, J. Keith Desormeaux, older by three years, is a race horse trainer. Desormeaux was a member of the local 4-H club, and was first exposed to race-riding at age 12. "The bush tracks were all around us, and our dad decided he might want to delve into horse racing and bought a bush track Acadiana Downs," explained his brother. "We lived in an agricultural area but we weren't farmers. Even before we got into racing, we all had horses to ride growing up." 1986-1997: Early success Desormeaux was sixtee ...
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Eddie Delahoussaye
Edward J. Delahoussaye (born September 21, 1951) is a retired American Thoroughbred jockey from New Iberia, Louisiana. He began his career in 1968 and ten years later became the top American jockey with 384 wins. He has won the Kentucky Derby in two consecutive years, riding Gato Del Sol in 1982 and Sunny's Halo in 1983 after finishing second in the 1981 Derby. In addition to his wins at the Kentucky Derby, he won the 1988 Preakness Stakes and the 1988 and 1992 Belmont Stakes as well as seven Breeders' Cup races. Eddie Delahoussaye was awarded the George Woolf Memorial Jockey Award in 1981. He was inducted into the Fair Grounds Racing Hall of Fame in 1991 and in 1993 into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame. He retired from horse racing in January 2003 as a result of injuries to his head and neck suffered in a fall at Del Mar Racetrack. Over his 34-year career, he is the 15th winningest jockey, with 6,384 races won. In terms of monetary winnings, he is also 15th all ...
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Curt Bourque
Curt C. Bourque (born August 22, 1967 in Erath, Louisiana) is an American jockey in Thoroughbred horse racing. He began his riding career in 1984 at Evangeline Downs in Lafayette, Louisiana and won his first race later that year at Jefferson Downs Racetrack. During his career, Bourque has ridden six winners on a single card at Evangeline Downs. Riding in Chicago for the first time in 1992, he rode five winners on one racecard at Sportsman's Park Racetrack. He has won riding titles at Fair Grounds Race Course in New Orleans as well as at Chicago's Hawthorne Race Course Hawthorne Race Course is a racetrack for horse racing in Stickney/Cicero, Illinois, near Chicago. The oldest continually run family-owned racetrack in North America, in 2009 the Horseplayers Association of North America introduced a rating syst ... and Sportsman's Park. References Curt Bourque's 3,000th career win at barntowire.com Year-end charts {{DEFAULTSORT:Bourque, Curt 1967 births Living people Peo ...
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Calvin Borel
Calvin H. Borel (born November 7, 1966) is an American jockey in thoroughbred horse racing and rode the victorious mount in the 2007 Kentucky Derby, the 2009 Kentucky Derby and the 2010 Kentucky Derby. His 2009 Derby win with Mine That Bird was the third biggest upset in Derby history, (after Donerail and Rich Strike), and Borel's winning margin of lengths was the greatest in Derby history since Assault won by 8 lengths in 1946. On May 1, 2009, Borel won the Kentucky Oaks aboard Rachel Alexandra, only the second time since 1993 that a jockey has won the Oaks-Derby combo, and just the seventh time overall a jockey has accomplished this feat in the same year. On May 16, 2009, Borel won the 2009 Preakness Stakes at Pimlico with thoroughbred filly Rachel Alexandra. In doing so, Borel became the first jockey to win the first two jewels of the Triple Crown on different mounts. Borel's nickname is "Bo'rail'" due to his penchant for riding close to the rail to save ground. Life and c ...
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Ronald Ardoin
Ronald D. Ardoin (born June 13, 1957 in Carencro, Louisiana) is a retired jockey in American Thoroughbred horse racing. He is one of a number of successful Cajun jockeys who began their careers riding in bush track races in Louisiana. In 1973, at Delta Downs in Vinton, Louisiana, Ron Ardoin earned the first of his 5226 career wins. During his thirty-one years in racing he won twelve riding titles at Louisiana tracks, earning six at the Fair Grounds Race Course in New Orleans and another six at Louisiana Downs in Bossier City. Ardoin also won a riding title at Lone Star Park in Grand Prairie, Texas. At Oaklawn Park Race Track in Hot Springs, Arkansas, he scored the most significant win of his career when he rode Zarb's Magic to victory in the 1996 Arkansas Derby. That win led to riding Zarb's Magic to a thirteenth place result in the 1996 Kentucky Derby. In his only other Derby start, he finished tenth aboard Encolure in the 1985 edition. On August 20, 2000, Ron Ardoin became the ...
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