Trainer Dallas Stewart sent out yet another longshot to blow up the gimmicks in a Triple Crown event when Tale of Verve closed steadily to be second at 28-1 in the 140th Preakness on Saturday at Pimlico.
Bob Baffert won the trainers’ participation bonus at Pimlico last weekend, according to stakes coordinator Coley Blind.
The Palm Meadows training center will be kept open throughout the summer for the first time since the facility opened in 2002. One horseman already happy to have availed himself of the opportunity to stable at the Boynton Beach location this summer is Carlo Vaccarezza, who sent out a pair of winners from Palm Meadows over the weekend at Gulfstream Park, including Little Michelle in Saturday’s Gracie Handicap.
The first horse Mercedes Sables ran at Northlands Park, Rock and Glory, completely dominated her opponents in the $53,700 Wild Rose Handicap for fillies and mares last Saturday. Expect a similar performance from Indian Brava when she runs in the $50,000 Chariot Chaser on Friday night. The six-furlong sprint for 3-year-old fillies attracted eight horses, but Indian Brava appears to be in a class by herself.
The National Thoroughbred Racing Association is coordinating with account-wagering companies and racing organizations with large mailing lists to drum up support for proposed changes to tax laws affecting withholding on pari-mutuel winnings, NTRA officials said Wednesday.
Graham Motion is inching closer to both his 51st birthday and career win No. 2,000. The birthday, which is Friday, will likely spark the first celebration, but the second shouldn’t be far behind.
The Preakness monsoon cleared out the Pimlico infield, spread out the field by 48 lengths from front to back, and played mind games with figure makers, including those of us at Beyer Central. “Making figures is sometimes a science and sometimes an art,” Andrew Beyer said. “This time, it was intelligent guesswork at best.”
Midnight Aria, the 2013 Queen’s Plate winner, returns from a five-month layoff in the featured seventh race at Woodbine, a third-level optional claimer at seven furlongs.
The best horse in the Friday feature at Churchill Downs might well be Dynamic Impact. But that doesn’t mean he will win.Making his first start since finishing seventh in the 2014 Preakness, Dynamic Impact will face seven other older horses in the seventh of nine Friday races.
Tapit’s World (#6, ML 3-1) takes on six in Wednesday’s eighth race at Delaware Park, the 1 1/16-mile Winter Melody Stakes. Since Jan. 1, 2014, trainer Michelle Nevin is winning at a 33 percent clip when saddling a horse switching from a sprint to a route, for a return on investment of $3.59.
