A little more than three weeks removed from the Breeders’ Cup, and I’ve got Breeders’ Cup on the brain. It’s inevitable, going to Keeneland, seeing the facilities, and imagining what is to come.
Typically, their battleground is New York, but dangle a Grade 1 and $500,000 out there and the big-time trainers will make sure to divert their attention to Kentucky on any given autumn Saturday. Kiaran McLaughlin, Graham Motion, Todd Pletcher, and Chad Brown all have contenders in the sixth and final Grade 1 of the Keeneland fall meet, the Queen Elizabeth II Challenge Cup, and they’ll reprise their familiar rivalries Saturday before another happy crowd of race-goers in the Bluegrass State.
Nucky will put his perfect career record on the line Saturday night, when he seeks to win his sixth consecutive race in the Grade 1, $448,515 Dash For Cash Quarter Horse Futurity at Lone Star Park.
Hero’s Amor goes for her fourth win in a row when she tackles older fillies and mares in the $50,000 Duchess of York Handicap at Northlands Park on Saturday. Standing directly in her way is the much-improved Truvi.
I have to give Miss Temple City one more shot to beat Sentiero Italia in Saturday’s Queen Elizabeth II Challenge Cup at Keeneland.
Opening day of the 2015 Gulfstream Park West meet was deemed a big success by track management, with all-sources handle up 87 percent over the inaugural meeting held under Gulfstream Park auspices at the track formerly known as Calder Race Course last year.
With little to choose, at least from a Beyer Speed Figures standpoint, between at least a half-dozen members of the field, bettors may want to look for value rather than choose the obvious favorites in Saturday’s $50,000 allowance feature scheduled to be run over the Gulfstream Park West turf course
On the last day before the U.S. Congress adjourned for the 2006 elections, legislators hastily passed an amendment to a port-security bill, one that never was debated and that few lawmakers had read or understood. Called the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, the tacked-on amendment effectively shut off U.S. customers’ access to online poker sites. Hundreds of thousands of poker players lost tens of millions of dollars as many of the leading poker sites shut down. Nearly a decade later, it turns out the key portion of the UIGEA may not have been the outlawing of online poker but an obscure and seemingly harmless provision that exempted one form of online gambling from the new prohibitions: “fantasy sports” betting.
Multiple graded stakes winner Race Day will stand at Spendthrift Farm in 2016 as the Lexington, Ky., farm continues to expand its strong stallion roster.
The 9-year-old Russell Road, closing in on $2 million in earnings, and his 6-year-old arch rival, Lucy’s Bob Boy, seeking to become a millionaire, clash for the 12th time during their highly successful careers in Saturday night’s $500,000 West Virginia Breeders’ Classic at Charles Town.
