Trainer Roger Brueggemann is about to get much more closely acquainted with Fair Grounds, where he will stable an entire barn full of horses this winter, nearly all of them for the Midwest Thoroughbreds Inc. of Richard and Karen Papiese.
Trainer Todd Pletcher will be well represented in Friday’s $39,000 feature at Gulfstream Park West with the Group 2-placed South American-bred Morning Dancer and the improving 3-year-old African Fighter. They will top a field of eight set to clash at a mile under first-level optional $16,000 claiming conditions.
Harry Rosenblum hit the jackpot last weekend with Gentlemen's Bet in the $350,000 Frank J. De Francis Memorial Dash Stakes. The owner hopes to hit another one Saturday as he has recent acquisition Whitmore in the Grade 3, $1 million Delta Downs Jackpot.
Jeremey Day's analysis of the Friday 11/20 card at Balmoral Park.
Brewster Smith's analysis of the Friday 11/20 card at Yonkers Raceway.
The Gulfstream Park championship meet does not begin until Dec. 5, but the influx of northern-based horsemen to south Florida is well underway. Saturday's Grade 3 My Charmer and Tropical Turf handicaps at Gulfstream Park West both perfectly illustrate that point.
Toews On Ice, who scored his third straight stakes win in the Grade 3 Bob Hope last Saturday, likely will get a chance to stretch out in the Grade 1 Los Alamitos Futurity for 2-year-olds on Dec. 19, trainer Bob Baffert said Wednesday.
It was the ninth race at Mahoning Valley on Nov. 4, the betting opportunity of the 21st century, a maiden filly with an overwhelming Beyer figure edge going off at 110-1. As Andrew Beyer wrote me a few days after the race, “under the circumstances, 110 to 1 was a bit of an overlay.”
The Maryland Racing Commission on Tuesday approved 164 racing days in the state for 2016 and the stakes schedule for the Laurel Park winter meet.
The Penn National Gaming tracks of Penn National, Mahoning Valley Race Course, and Zia Park will run 11 stakes worth more than $1.6 million during Thanksgiving week.
