Arlington hanging on during hard times
Excitement is supposed to accompany a season’s start, but Arlington’s 77-day meet that begins Friday comes draped in drab.
DRF StaffApr 29, 2015
Excitement is supposed to accompany a season’s start, but Arlington’s 77-day meet that begins Friday comes draped in drab.
Don’t blink or you could miss a pretty good race. Friday’s Grade 3 Twin Spires Turf Sprint at Churchill Downs features a well-matched field of a dozen grass sprint specialists set to sizzle five furlongs in quest of a $150,000 purse.
It’s the Texas Mile, Take 2. A week after severe weather at Lone Star Park led to the cancellation of the Grade 3, $200,000 race, the rescheduled edition goes Friday night with Sr. Quisqueyano again in place as the favorite. He is part of a 10-horse field that includes stakes winners Rise Up, One King’s Man, and Texas Air. The forecast is for sunny skies and a high of 80 degrees.
The following is a brief assessment of some of the Kentucky Oaks contenders based on impressions from their workouts and gallops here over the past 10 days.
While a majority of the runners in this year’s Kentucky Derby will indeed be returning to “My Old Kentucky Home” when they step onto the track for the post parade, a handful of colts serve as standard-bearers for state and regional breeding programs looking to add to their history or add international flavor to America’s most storied race.
The remarkable comeback of Hall of Fame jockey Gary Stevens continues on Saturday, when he rides in the Kentucky Derby for the 21st time, seeking his fourth win.
Plenty of great trainers have come to America from Sweden and made their mark. Some were well established before they set foot in the states. Jenny Melander was not. But the 40-year-old trainer, who was born in Stockholm, Sweden, is rapidly making a name for herself.
Molly Morgan, second in the Grade 1 La Troienne Stakes last year, may be primed to improve upon that effort in what will be her second start of the year Friday at Churchill Downs.
Mubtaahij and his trainer Michael de Kock have spanned the globe on their way to the 141st Kentucky Derby.
It’s no secret that the racing game was not quite ready for what the West Coast unleashed upon the Kentucky Derby last year. Maybe it was the down-market bloodlines of the victorious California Chrome. Maybe it was Runyonesque trainer Art Sherman, a walking history book. Maybe it was owners Steve Coburn and Perry Martin and their competing moustaches, who just as easily could have been partners in a hardware franchise. Whatever spell they cast definitely freaked people out.