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.
Ride On Curlin, runner-up in the 2014 Preakness, is on another break after coming out of his last start “a little banged up,” according to trainer Billy Gowan.
Eight stakes winners from two states as well as Brazil and France are among the projected field of 10 fillies and mares for Monday’s $300,000 Gamely Stakes at Santa Anita.
Liam’s Map, unraced since winning the Harlan’s Holiday last December, worked a solid half-mile in 48.63 seconds over the Belmont Park training track Friday morning in company with the graded stakes winner Blofeld.
Materiality, who finished a troubled sixth in the Kentucky Derby, worked a terrific five furlongs in 59.81 seconds Friday morning over the Belmont main track. Materiality was one of five Belmont Stakes horses to put in workouts Friday morning, a roster that included Pletcher’s other two expected entrants, Carpe Diem and Madefromlucky, Kentucky Derby fourth-place finisher Frosted, and, in Kentucky, Conquest Curlinate, the Peter Pan runner-up.
Wally Van finally will shake Get Happy Mister on Sunday in the $40,000 Arapahoe Park Sprint. Wally Van faced Get Happy Mister in three consecutive stakes races at the Colorado meet a year ago, and Get Happy Mister won all of them en route to taking the Grade 3 San Simeon at Santa Anita.
A Smart Strike filly purchased for $1.25 million at Monday’s Fasig-Tipton Midatlantic sale of 2-year-olds in-training at Timonium, Md., will be trained in Southern California by Simon Callaghan.
Who in the Chicago racing scene before this past winter had heard of Vicente Gudiel, the apprentice rider who arrived at Hawthorne in December and won the riding title there at the winter-spring meet? No one, basically, and now it is happening again – another obscure rider landing on the Chicago circuit and quickly making his mark.
