The Grade 3 Mint Julep Handicap is the Saturday feature and finale all in one, and with a ridiculously well-matched field of 12 fillies and mares, it should provide a fitting segue into the televised drama from Belmont Park.
A multiple-stakes winner in 2014, the 4-year-old Il Sogno Dream is among 10 horses entered in Saturday’s $200,000 Charlie Hill Memorial for older trotters at Scioto Downs Racino. The field also includes Bee A Magician, the 2013 Horse of the Year, and stakes-winner Natural Herbie.
No one will be busier on Saturday at Belmont Park than trainer Todd Pletcher, who has 14 horses entered on the marathon card, including two in the Belmont Stakes. He will try to get the day off to an auspicious start in the opener, the $150,000 Easy Goer Stakes, in which he sends out Stanford and Nonna’s Boy, two-thirds of the now-three-horse field.
Wonder About Lola (#5, ML 4-1) returns in Thursday’s eighth race at Canterbury Park, a six-furlong allowance. It will be her first start since finishing fourth by 2 1/4 lengths on April 9 at Oaklawn Park. The second-, fifth-, and sixth-place finishers from that race came back to win their next starts.
Tonalist may rate a slight edge in Saturday’s Metropolitan Handicap, given his affinity for Belmont Park, where he has won four graded stakes, including last year’s Belmont and Jockey Club Gold Cup.
The $60,000 Tiger Lily Handicap is the jewel of the three stakes races being held Saturday at Gulfstream Park. After all, the five-furlong turf sprint for fillies and mares drew 15 horses – 14 can start – compared to the seven-horse fields in the $60,000 Parrot Key and the $60,000 Tangelo Handicap.
A trio of 3-year-old fillies – all coming off daylight wins and career-best Beyer Speed Figures in first-level allowance races – step up to stakes company for Saturday’s $75,000 Jostle Stakes at Parx Racing.
It is hard to go past Quatre Cat in the $50,000 Emerald Downs Handicap on Saturday at Hastings. The 6 1/2-furlong sprint for 3-year-old fillies drew five horses and goes as race 3 on the seven-race card that begins at 1:50 p.m. Pacific.
Two-time Ohio-bred horse of the year Needmore Flattery will need to show a lot more than she did in her season’s debut to win Saturday’s $75,000 Michael Mackey Memorial/Angenora Stakes at ThistleDown.
Escena, the champion older mare of 1998, died Tuesday at Diamond A Farms in Versailles, Ky., from the infirmities of old age, BloodHorse reported. The 22-year-old daughter of Strawberry Road had been living as a pensioner at Diamond A Farms, producing her last foal, a Shackleford filly, in 2014.
