Party Time For Racetrackers In Phoenix

A recent party at the homestead of Oscar Quiroz and Tiffany Leggett just off Greenway Road in Phoenix celebrated a couple of events, the 25th birthday of jockey Denny Velazquez, and his departure as well….an abbreviated departure but a departure nonetheless. Velazquez, who is having a bang-up meet at Turf Paradise, his best ever, has […]

Canterbury Park Jockey Denny Velazquez

Denny Velazquez

Denny Velazquez is one of the top riders at Canterbury Park.  On Sunday he won the $100,000 Mystic Lake Mile on Hay Dakota. Learn more about Denny in this video:

SWEET TAPPER, HAY DAKOTA SHINE IN STAKES

Hay Dakota

BY JIM WELLS The connections in horse racing are sometimes astounding as well as confounding and on a strange afternoon at the racetrack some of that played out during a card that featured exceptional stakes racing and some mind-boggling vignettes as well. Highlights are simple to point out: The two $100,000 stakes on the card, […]

Hay Dakota wins G3 Commonwealth Turf Stakes

Trainer Joel Berndt, a regular at Canterbury Park over the past years, won the first graded stakes race of his career when Hay Dakota stormed down the middle of the turf course Saturday evening at Churchill Downs, getting up to win the grade three $100,000 Commonwealth Turf Stakes by a neck at odds of 29 […]

Denny Velazquez

By Kristin Bechthold Denny Velazquez is a jockey that brings his passion to the racetrack every morning. He considers his career a dream come true and claims that it is “better than being anything in the world.” He also brings an undying enthusiasm to the sport and loves the atmosphere of the crowd at Canterbury […]

Fillies Race for Hope

Pink hats, dresses, flowers, horses. Even little girls in pink wings. The starting gate was festooned in pink, and the scroll designating the type of race on the tote board television screen was the same color. It was Fillies Race for Hope day at Canterbury Park, an annual event to raise awareness and money for the support […]

Sunday Saratoga Connections

Most of the attention Sunday in the $20,000-added Cash Caravan Stakes was on defending champion Streak N Hot, Bob Morehouse winner Western Fun and a well-rested Naketa, making her first start in 13 months. That’s the fun of a 440-yard quarter horse dash, as Explosive Guns demonstrated with an explosive burst under Jorge Torres, enabling […]

Mystic Lake Derby Day Nears

Go ahead and pick up the champagne, dig out the attire you wore last year for the race, careful to assure everything is the same, not a single accoutrement out-of-place, cross your fingers and don’t say anything that might be construed as a jinx. “My dad’s superstitious,” said Lori Keith. “It will have to be […]

20,291 Enjoy Extreme Day

You could have looked high and low and not found anything ordinary about the day or its trappings. It was extreme in every sense of the word, from the camels, ostriches and zebras to the crowd itself. Extreme Day on Saturday evoked scenes from the 1980s. The extremely large crowd was a Canterbury Park record […]

The Turf Chute Makes Its Debut

Not many in the sizable crowd of over 7,000 Thursday realized they were witnessing a small bit of Canterbury Park history, a footnote perhaps to much more that has happened since racing debuted in 1985, yet something to remember nonetheless. No one said one day they will bounce a grandchild on a knee and recall […]