LAS VEGAS - Funny Cide and Empire Maker make their first starts since the Belmont Stakes this weekend, but they will take separate routes to the Travers Stakes on Aug. 23.
Kentucky Derby and Preakness hero Funny Cide will use the Haskell Stakes at Monmouth for his prep while his Belmont Stakes conqueror, Empire Maker, will prep in Saratoga's Jim Dandy. Funny Cide and Empire Maker will be heavy favorites in their respective races, but neither colt is a lock to win.
Haskell
NEW YORK - Impressions from a busy racing weekend:
The racing expression "What goes 'round, comes 'round" is as old as dirt, but it still applies, and Voodoo Dancer's victory in Saturday's Diana Handicap at Saratoga was the latest illustration.
NEW YORK - The first Saturday of the Del Mar and Saratoga meets offer just the kind of outstanding stakes racing that both tracks are legendary for, with each track presenting a stakes doubleheader combining an excellent race for fillies and mares on turf with a top-class main-track sprint. At Saratoga, it is a Grade 1 combination of the $500,000 Diana Handicap on the grass and the $250,000 Test Stakes. At Del Mar, champion Golden Apples returns in the Grade 1, $400,000 John C.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - There is a sure winner on Friday: the movie "Seabiscuit," which is expected to race into theaters with a large turnout. But I'll be looking for another winner on Friday, and it won't be at my local cinema, but at the track.
Friday is the start of wagering in the first round of the Breeders' Cup future pools. Betting closes on Sunday at 9 p.m. Eastern.
BOSTON - Consider the case of Lord Abounding.
Last fall he developed into a very nice 3-year-old sprinter. On Oct. 23 at Laurel he earned a strong Beyer figure of 88. After he fell back to a 61 in his next start and then improved to a 72 in the mud at Aqueduct, he showed up at Gulfstream on Jan. 23 in the middle of a figure cycle that made him usable at odds of 28-1.
What a huge week for Thoroughbred racing - the opening of the nation's two premier summer race meets, Saratoga and Del Mar, and the national release of the movie "Seabiscuit." By Sunday night, Saratoga and Del Mar will have already played host to eight graded stakes, half of them Grade 1's, and we will know if the Biscuit is a winner once again.
Yet, with all that, there is another item of interest this week. On Friday, the first round of the begins.
Betting on the first round of this year's opens on Friday at 1 p.m. Eastern, with bets being accepted all weekend on four of the Breeders' Cup races.
The betting will open almost three months to the day from the Oct. 25 Breeders' Cup at Oak Tree at Santa Anita in Southern California. The four races being offered on the initial weekend are the Classic, Turf, Distaff, and Sprint.
LAS VEGAS - Two-year-old racing doesn't really begin in earnest until June, so it's quite amazing that freshman sire Stravinsky already has 13 winners and it's only late July. While most of these winners were in Europe, members of Stravinsky's first crop of juveniles have also appeared in the United States.
Stravinsky was a champion sprinter in England at 3, when he captured two prestigious Group 1 races, the July Cup and the Nunthorpe Stakes. In the July Cup, he set a course record, winning by four lengths over Bold Edge, Bertolini, and Arkadian Hero.