DEVELOPING 120 active fires burning across Canada, 30 are 'out of control'
The 2024 wildfire season has begun, and it's shaping up to follow last year's unprecedented destruction in kind, with thousands of square kilometres already consumed.
The Pegasus World Cup will continue. It may even expand.
Planning is underway for the next Pegasus, now that the day headlined by Gulfstream Park playing host to one of the biggest-money races in North America is complete for another year. And one idea on the table is adding a West Coast element to Pegasus days, with 1/ST -- the group that owns and operates Gulfstream -- potentially looking to bring Santa Anita, another of its tracks in Southern California, into the mix.
"Stay tuned on that," said Belinda Stronach, the chairman and president of 1/ST. "It's coming."
There has now been six editions of the Pegasus, a race day that was met with skepticism when plans for it were first revealed in the mid-2010s. The format has changed almost annually; the purse structure for the Pegasus World Cup no longer requires owners to put up $1 million apiece for a spot in the starting gate for what was, at its birth, the world's richest race at as much as $16 million.
Saturday's headline race won by Life Is Good featured a $3 million purse, much smaller than the earlier Pegasus runnings but still quite significant considering only two Breeders' Cup races last year offered bigger purses at a U.S. track.
A Pegasus turf race was eventually added, a second turf race was added this year, and the last two versions of Pegasus day -- when Gulfstream marries racing with a celebrity vibe, some tickets going for upward of $1,000 just to get into the track -- have been pulled off during a pandemic.
Stronach and her group are always looking for the next big thing. And growth -- which she's sought for some time when discussing the Pegasus brand -- might not be far off.
"We're going to continue to do Pegasus," Stronach said. "We're going to continue to innovate around the platform. But we have some amazing properties and amazing tracks. Let's curate our racing content in a way that Gulfstream Park isn't running over Santa Anita, curate it properly, build some interesting themes around the East Coast and West Coast."
And part of that might include changing the way some people bet.
"Just make it fun and exciting," she said.
Racing has had the same sorts of wagers forever -- win, place, show, exacta, trifecta and the like. Not every visitor to a track understands how they work, and even fewer understand all the data that horseplayers pore over while handicapping a race.
But now, with Stronach's group working on developing high-tech info like never before, the sort that can churn out 50,000 data points from each horse during every race, even novice horseplayers may be able to play with an app and get a better understanding of what's happening. It's simple math: Get more people feeling comfortable betting, handle will rise, purses will rise and racing would see needed growth.
"One of the things we always ask ourselves is how do we get more eyeballs onto our sport, and that I think means simplification in terms of wagering," Stronach said. "The handicapping can be very intimidating. So, we're looking at simplification and we've made some strides there. ... It's not far off. It's not far off."
The 2024 wildfire season has begun, and it's shaping up to follow last year's unprecedented destruction in kind, with thousands of square kilometres already consumed.
Veteran TSN broadcaster Darren 'Dutch' Dutchyshen, one of Canada’s best-known sports journalists, has died. He was 57. His family says 'he passed as he was surrounded by his closest loved ones.'
A British Columbia Supreme Court judge has sentenced the mother and stepfather of a six-year-old boy who died from blunt-force trauma in 2018 to 15 years in prison.
The Speaker of the Saskatchewan Legislature Randy Weekes has severed ties with the Sask. Party after accusing some members of harassment and intimidation tactics, including a situation he claimed saw the Government House Leader bring a hunting rifle to the legislative building.
Kevin Spacey is pushing back on the 'rush to judgment' against him and is being backed by some big names as he seeks to reclaim his acting career.
A ‘lifetime of abuse’ led Dallas Ly to snap and repeatedly stab his mother inside their Leslieville apartment in 2022 but he never intended to kill her, his defence lawyers argued during his murder trial in Toronto on Thursday.
A father has been charged with second-degree murder in the stabbing death of his 34-year-old daughter in southern Quebec.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau assailed New Brunswick's premier and other conservative leaders on Thursday, calling out the provincial government's position on abortion, LGBTQ youth and climate change.
Canada's new $10-a-day child care program is expanding, but there's growing evidence that demand for the program is rising even faster, leaving many parents on the outside looking in.
A Starbucks fan — whose name is Winter — is visiting Canada on a purposeful journey that began with a random idea at one of the coffee chain's stores in Texas.
Members of Piapot First Nation, students from the University of Winnipeg and various other professionals are learning new techniques that will hopefully be used for ground searches of potential unmarked grave sites in the future.
ALS patient Mathew Brown said he’s hopeful for future ALS patients after news this week of research at Western University of a potential cure for ALS.
When Adam Kirschner wrote 'Slap Shot,' he never imagined the song would be embraced by his favourite team.
A team is ready to help an entangled North Atlantic right whale in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
A $200 reward is being offered by a North Vancouver family for the safe return of their beloved chicken, Snowflake.
Two daughters and a mother were reunited online 40 years later thanks to a DNA kit and a Zoom connection despite living on three separate continents and speaking different languages.
Mother's Day can be a difficult occasion for those who have lost or are estranged from their mom.
YES Theatre Young Company opened its acclaimed kids’ show, One Small Step, at Sudbury Theatre Centre on Saturday.