Cinco Charlie and Bayerd have accomplished more than the average young horse as stakes winners at both one and two turns. But their best lick might be sprinting and as such both have landed in the $100,000 Gazebo on Saturday at Oaklawn Park.
Callisto, fresh off a solid third-place finish with similar company last time out in her first start in three months, looks well-placed to pick up her third career win on Saturday when she tops a full field of 3-year-old fillies slated for the 1 1/16-mile optional-claiming headliner over the Tampa Bay Downs turf course.
The turf-distance division in Southern California has belonged to Finnegans Wake since the Breeders’ Cup Turf last November.
Bench Warrant and Daddy D T both have won a stakes on turf in Southern California in the last seven months. Both are trained by John Sadler and both have something to prove in Saturday’s $75,000 Pasadena Stakes.
Jockey Corey Nakatani is expected to miss at least a month after suffering a collarbone injury in a spill last Sunday, he said on Thursday.
Beholder, the champion 2-year-old filly of 2012 and champion 3-year-old filly of 2013, is nearing a return to racing for the first time in more than six months.
Spring officially begins Friday, but Kentucky horseplayers defer to a different calendar. To them, spring begins Saturday, when Turfway Park hosts the $550,000, Grade 3 Spiral Stakes – its Kentucky Derby prep race that produced Derby winners Lil E. Tee in 1992 and Animal Kingdom in 2011.
An organization that recommends national policies on racing regulations expects to approve a rule establishing a threshold for the naturally occurring mineral cobalt at its next meeting in April, the executive director of the organization said on Thursday.
When it was reported that Ogygian died last Saturday, three days short of his actual 32nd birthday, it triggered a flood of memories about one of the most talented and frustrating racehorses of his era.
Royal Son broke through with an upset win in last month’s John Battaglia Memorial Stakes on Turfway Park’s synthetic surface, the local prep for the Grade 3 Spiral Stakes this Saturday. The Tiznow colt will get a class test in the days and weeks ahead but does bring a classic-type pedigree to his upcoming challenges.
