DRF Plus handicapping reports for Saturday, March 21
Download DRF Plus handicapping reports for Saturday's races, including DRF Daily GamePlan, the Positive ROI Report, and Key Race Report.
DRF StaffMar 20, 2015
Download DRF Plus handicapping reports for Saturday's races, including DRF Daily GamePlan, the Positive ROI Report, and Key Race Report.
A good horse can come from anywhere, and have any kind of pedigree. But good horses occur far more rarely from unfashionable pedigrees than from those replete with the heavy black type of graded stakes winners. That is why the California Chromes of our small, insular world make such wonderful, populist stories. It also is why we must celebrate the Grade 1 success of horses such as Warren’s Veneda, winner of the Santa Margarita Handicap on March 14 at Santa Anita.
Diabolical’s career at stud thus far has been all about starting fast. Diabolical, a 12-year-old son of Artax, was New Mexico’s leading active sire by progeny earnings in 2014, propelled by a fleet of stakes-level 2-year-olds that made him the only North American sire standing west of the Mississippi River last year to finish in the top 50 by juvenile earnings.
Songandaprayer arrived in Louisiana as the state’s leading general sire, and not much has changed since. The 17-year-old son of Unbridled’s Song ranks as the Bayou State’s top stallion for the third year in a row.
There are two stakes races at Santa Anita on Saturday, and if you think the two morning-line favorites are vulnerable, you may be able to make a score. I’ll look to play both of those races.
The Delaware Horse Racing Commission has reached a five-year deal with Truesdail Laboratory in California to perform the state’s drug testing, according to the executive director of the commission.
An unfortunate byproduct of so many tracks turning major stakes days into big event days loaded with stakes is that now, not every Saturday card can be a knockout. Even at top tracks. And that is the case Saturday at Gulfstream Park.
Los Alamitos and Santa Anita are trying to settle a conflict over which track will host racing on the last weekend of September.
Alan Sherman, the son and main assistant of trainer Art Sherman, traveled with California Chrome to Louisville for the Kentucky Derby, to Baltimore for the Preakness, and to Long Island, N.Y., for the Belmont Stakes. The three Triple Crown stops all have their particular charms and quirks. But none would have prepared him for his latest trip with the 2014 Horse of the Year – to Meydan Racecourse in Dubai. “It’s different, I’ll say that,” Sherman said by phone Friday morning from Dubai.
Trainer Henry Dominguez will attack the Sunland Derby Day program at his home track in New Mexico on Sunday with 15 horses in the entries, including the barn’s flagship runner, Isn’t He Clever.