Post Time will be moving back to the distance that produced his best career Beyer Speed Figure on Friday, when he seeks to win his fifth consecutive stakes race in the Grade 3, $175,000 Westchester at the Belmont at Aqueduct meet.
The offering for 4-year-olds and up at a one-turn mile drew seven runners, including Charge It, a Grade 2 winner making his first start since running fourth in the Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile in November.
CHURCHILL DOWNS
Wednesday, May 1
Weather: Clear
Temperature: 58 degrees
Track: Fast
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – The final countdown has begun to Oaks and Derby 2024 with the goal for the connections of all contenders to just keep their horses happy and sound until their respective races on Friday and Saturday.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Dornoch has dealt with a foot issue known as a quarter crack through most of his career. Given his race record – three wins and two seconds from six starts – it has not been an impediment to success.
Noted farrier Ian McKinlay has examined Dornoch before each of his last three races – starting with the Grade 2 Remsen last December, which he won – and has done whatever work necessary to have the foot in racing condition. On Wednesday, McKinlay was at Churchill Downs where he laced, with wires, the top part of the crack, which is on the right front foot.
HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – Kantex will be looking to improve upon her outstanding 5-for-7 record at Oaklawn Park on Friday, when she attempts to nail down her first win at two turns in the $150,000 Natural State Breeders’.
The one-mile race ends at the sixteenth pole and is for fillies and mares bred in Arkansas. It has drawn a field of 10, including last year’s winner, Kaboom Baby.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – The first thing that happens when someone breeds a Thoroughbred racehorse is they wait. It will take at least two years, bare minimum, from the time a foal hits the ground until it races. Buy a yearling, in September, say, and months and months of waiting still lie ahead. And after all that waiting, how many owners and breeders in an age of instant gratification want to wait some more, while a horse figures out how to race, how to win?
The address for Churchill Downs in Louisville remains 700 Central Avenue, as it has for more than 100 years. But anyone who has not visited that address in 20 years might not believe they have arrived at the right place.
ARCADIA, Calif. – The first 2-year-old maiden races of the Santa Anita spring meet will be run Friday, and trainer Luis Mendez will try to sweep the 4 1/2-furlong California-bred sprints.
R Heisman drew the rail in race 1, an open race. Cali Cream breaks from the middle of the field in race 5, restricted to fillies. Mendez expects both first-time starters will run well.
He would know. Mendez works and gallops many of his horses in the morning, though he recognizes neither R Heisman nor Cali Dream is a cinch.
A highly competitive first-level allowance race for Florida-breds, 3-year-olds and up, is featured at Gulfstream Park on Friday. Just about all of the seven horses in the 1 1/16-mile turf race have a chance.
As an example of how tough the race is to sort out, Daily Racing Form handicappers Michael Hammersly and Scott Ehlers mention five different horses in their selections. It goes as race 7 on an eight-race card that begins at 1:10 p.m. Eastern.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Two of the most exciting turf females in the country run Friday at Churchill Downs, as Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf winner Hard to Justify makes her 3-year-old debut in the Grade 2, $600,000 Edgewood Stakes and Ova Charged, coming off a massive figure at Fair Grounds, makes her major-stage debut in the Grade 3, $400,000 Unbridled Sidney Stakes.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Is the second time the charm?
That’s one of the questions for top contenders in the Grade 1, $1.5 million Kentucky Oaks – the 150th running of the filly classic – on Friday at Churchill Downs. Just F Y I, last year’s Eclipse Award champion juvenile filly, got a late start to her 3-year-old campaign and makes just her second start of the season in the Oaks. The same is true of Thorpedo Anna and Ways and Means.
It can be done. Three years ago, Malathaat won the Oaks in her second start of the year.
