Press release
The race summary for Friday, November 22nd at Batavia Downs will tell you that Lougazi won the Open 1 Handicap in the 7th race by an easy 1 ¼ lengths, but that’s not the whole story.
It capped an amazing 24 hours for the horse, who just the night previous had an adventure which saw him corralled in the Batavia Downs parking lot at 2:00a.m.
Due to high winds on Thursday night, the barn door of Barn 1 swung open and after opening his own stall door, Lougazi went for a walk around the barn area. After working his way over to the Richmond entrance, he proceeded to walk out of the gate onto Richmond Avenue.
Spending some time at the VA, he walked down to Alex’s Place to check out their holiday decorations. Feeling a bit lucky he headed over to the Batavia Downs parking lot where a friendly patron was able to stall him until Batavia Downs staff could coax him back to his stall with a midnight snack of horse feed.
Security was informed by a patron that the horse was loose and immediately took action. “We followed the horse very slowly and got him back inside the gate on Richmond safely,” said Security Guard Nate Stone.
After all that excitement Lougazi got enough sleep and was able to overcome any prerace jitters to win the Open Handicap the following night.
