Tapiture will be making his first start in Texas on Monday when he runs in the Grade 3, $200,000 Lone Star Park Handicap, but he should feel right at home. His trainer, Steve Asmussen, has a division at the Dallas-area track. Asmussen also has a residence near Lone Star and ranks as the track’s all-time winningest trainer. Asmussen also notched a Lone Star Handicap win in 2013 with Master Rick.
After a seven-month layoff, La Madrina kicks off her 4-year-old campaign Sunday in third-level allowance race going six furlongs at Belmont Park.
Worried about the future of racing? Yeah, me too. But there are a few silver linings that sparkle through the muck and the mire, and for the purposes of celebrating a holiday weekend rife with good sport, I figure it can’t hurt to shine a spotlight in a couple of special directions.
Lookin At Lucky followed up his 2009 Eclipse Award as champion 2-year-old male with another statuette in 2010 for champion 3-year-old male. Lookin At Lucky’s first foals are now 3-year-olds, and he is showing signs of adding to the impressive stallion numbers generated by his predecessors. Madefromlucky, winner of the Grade 2 Peter Pan Stakes on May 9, is his sixth stakes winner, and given the impressive form of others from his first crop, including Santa Anita Derby runner-up One Lucky Dane, there will be many more to come.
Let’s Go Donki can become the first filly to complete the Japanese 1000 Guineas and Japanese Oaks double in three years Sunday at Tokyo Racecourse.
An anticipated rematch between speedy 3-year-olds Prime Engine and Trackattacker will have to wait. Prime Engine will start Sunday in the $50,000 Auburn Handicap at Emerald Downs, but Trackattacker, the fastest 2-year-old at Emerald last summer until Prime Engine eclipsed him in the season-ending Gottstein Futurity, will not.
Tom Amoss concedes Hazards of Love might have gotten off a little easy when the veteran gelding won his last start, a second-level allowance that was rained off the turf at Keeneland. The race he was entered in on Sunday, Amoss says, will be tougher.
When Cirrus des Aigles made his career debut in 2008, Solow was two years away from being born, yet those two geldings – 9-year-old Cirrus des Aigles and 5-year-old Solow – are the principals Sunday at Longchamp in the Group 1 Prix d’Ispahan.
Last year, John Velazquez won the Grade 1 Metropolitan Handicap with a horse that had won the Belmont Stakes with a different rider the previous year.
Southern Honey will be making her first start since finishing sixth in the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint last fall when facing nine others here in the Memorial Day feature, the Grade 3, $100,000 Winning Colors Stakes.
