Trainer Craig MacPherson will try Sunday to win his second British Columbia Derby. If he wins the Grade 3, $250,000 race with Bluegrass Angus, it will be a little sweeter than his first victory with Second City.
With two wins at the distance and two good runs over the course, Sentiero Italia may rate a slight edge in a very competitive renewal of the Grade 2, $500,000 Sands Point Stakes for 3-year-old fillies on turf Saturday at Belmont Park.
By any metric, the 2015 Saratoga meet, which ended on Labor Day, was a runaway winner: Business boomed, fields filled, weather cooperated, racing thrived. You could spend an overly long evening handing out awards to all the horses and people who did something extraordinary during the meet, but for now let’s just take a look back at the 15 Grade 1 flat stakes races that were run during 40 days of racing.
With the seven-day Timonium meet at the Maryland State Fair in the books, racing returns to Laurel Park on Saturday with a four-stakes card topped by the $150,000 Lady Baltimore Stakes.
An evenly matched field of seven will square off in the Genesee Valley Breeders’, a 1 1/16-mile race for New York-bred 3-year-olds and up at Finger Lakes. Favoritism could go to either Baime or Fox Rules. Baime is trained by Michael Ferraro and Fox Rules is conditioned M. Anthony Ferraro, Michael’s 53-year-old son.
Keen Pauline comes in fresh and gets some class relief for a potential meeting with her elders in the $100,000 Locust Grove Stakes, the second of a pair of stakes for fillies and mares on the first Saturday card of the Churchill Downs September meeting.
While Lady Eli continues to make great progress in her battle against laminitis – with the possibility of returning to training early next year – one of the podiatrists instrumental in her recovery was killed earlier this week in a vehicular accident.
Green Gratto is going to be a handful in the New Jersey Breeders Handicap, one of three stakes for New Jersey-breds on Saturday’s card at Monmouth Park.
Rachel Wall and Kawfee Fa Marfa, who finished second and third in the Little Silver, will look to contnue the string of next-out winners when they clash in the $75,000 George Rosenberger Memorial Stakes, part of a stakes-laden Owners’ Day program Saturday at Delaware Park.
Da Big Hoss, Roman Approval, and Quiet Force – all of them claimed by trainer Mike Maker – will race for separate ownership groups Monday in the rescheduled $600,000 Kentucky Turf Cup, the signature race of the five-day meet at Kentucky Downs and the anchor leg of an all-stakes pick four at this turf-only track.
