The Frank J. De Francis Memorial Dash was run last weekend at Laurel Park with a $350,000 purse for the fourth straight year but still is waiting to be recognized by the American Graded Stakes Committee. Surely, it will make the grade next year.
Okie Ride might have to fend off Z Rockstar in the late stages to win the $50,000 Silver Goblin for the third time in his career Friday night at Remington Park. The 6 1/2-furlong race is restricted to 3-year-olds and up bred in Oklahoma.
Jerry Hollendorfer, the Hall of Fame trainer, entered the week just three wins away from 7,000 for his career, and there's a mathematical chance that the milestone win could come at Del Mar in Friday's featured seventh race with Sharaun, who makes her first start for Hollendorfer in the five-furlong turf sprint.
Anyone who wants to know what it is like to be a foreign national arrested by U.S. immigration officials for over-staying a working visa in these perilous times of border sensitivity need only give Paul Eddery a call. He spent nearly two months in an El Paso detention center last spring before he was repatriated to his native Ireland.
A move to create new rules to prevent racehorses in Illinois from being sold for slaughter was voted down and tabled until at least next month during a meeting of the Illinois Racing Board on Tuesday, prompting Kathy Byrne, the commissioner who has pushed for enhanced anti-slaughter regulation and submitted the item on the Tuesday agenda, to withdraw the proposal and hastily leave the meeting, saying she was resigning her post.
Kiss Moon was assigned post 12 as the 120-pound highweight in a field of 13 fillies and mares entered in the Grade 3, $100,000 Cardinal Handicap, to be run Saturday as the lone graded stakes of the weekend at Churchill Downs.
I actually came up with a couple situations where the trainer rule might make sense. So, while I generally do not think the concept of the trainer report policy will work, I will keep an open mind.
Eighth Wonder has faced relatively modest competition so far, but on Sunday kept her record perfect with a ridiculously easy win in the restricted Donna Freyer Stakes at Parx Racing.
Beholder, scratched from the Breeders’ Cup Classic two days before the race when she bled following a gallop at Keeneland, is getting some downtime away from the track and is not expected to rejoin trainer Richard Mandella’s barn at Santa Anita until early January.
Lucky Folie, who won the Desi Arnaz Stakes for 2-year-old fillies last Sunday, could come back in the Grade 1 Starlet Stakes at Los Alamitos on Dec. 12 or simply await the Santa Anita winter meeting, according to trainer Richard Mandella.
