Multiple Grade 1 stakes winner Honor Code will be the horse to beat in Saturday’s Grade 2, $400,000 Kelso Handicap, but California shipper Appealing Tale will be the horse to catch in the one-turn, one-mile race.
Todd Pletcher has won virtually every Grade 1 race run in New York. To this point, however, the Jockey Club Gold Cup has eluded him. Saturday, Pletcher will try again when he sends out the pair of Constitution and Coach Inge in the $1 million Jockey Club Gold Cup, a stepping-stone to the $5 million Breeders’ Cup Classic at Keeneland on Oct. 31.
The older horses Catch a Flight and Twentytwentyvision will be sidelined this fall after suffering recent injuries.
Another chapter will be tacked onto the remarkable story of Edward Boerjan when he saddles Kalamos for the second race Friday at Keeneland.
As dawn broke Wednesday morning, there was still no sign of D. Wayne Lukas at his longtime Barn 44 headquarters at Churchill Downs. But it wasn’t going to be much longer, said Lukas’s assistant, Bas Nicholl. And in any event, “he’s already back in full command of the ship” while giving instructions by phone from his home in the east end of Louisville, added Nicholl.
The losses are starting to mount for Kobe’s Back in recent months, giving added urgency to his appearance in Saturday’s $300,000 Santa Anita Sprint Championship.
No horse has won the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe three times, and in fact, no horse even has tried – not until Sunday, when Treve can etch even more deeply her place in racing history if she wins her third Arc.
A week after the Rodeo Drive at Santa Anita shed light on some of the top U.S. contenders for the Oct. 31 Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Turf, this Saturday’s Grade 1 Flower Bowl Invitational at Belmont Park is expected to do the same – albeit under vastly different turf conditions.
On Sunday in Paris, the 5-year-old mare Treve will run in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, Europe’s most prestigious and difficult prize. Four weeks later, on the last Saturday of the month, the 5-year-old mare Beholder will take on a similar challenge when she meets American Pharoah and company in the Breeders’ Cup Classic, North America’s richest Thoroughbred event.
What figures to be the greatest month in the nearly 80-year history of Keeneland Race Course opens this weekend with riveting matchups in traditional features such as the Phoenix and Spinster Stakes. But wait … there’s more!
