The owners and trainers of upwardly mobile older fillies and mares were looking at $700,000 on the table Saturday and a choice between running in the Azeri Stakes at Oaklawn Park against champion Untapable and the Santa Margarita at Santa Anita Park against a California-bred winner of one major event who was sired by a $1,000 stallion. Guess which way they went.
Saratoga Snacks, winner of a New York-bred allowance race on Feb. 12, breezed a sharp half-mile in 48.15 seconds over the Belmont Park training track Thursday morning.
Overprepared, who had mixed results in two stakes races going long this winter, will shorten up to six furlongs in Sunday’s $100,000 Cicada Stakes for 3-year-old fillies at Aqueduct.
Though he seemed to regain his top form in one-turn races last year, Vyjack will be pointed to multiple-turn races to begin 2015.
The ageless wonder Hold On Smokey, who chased winning Bold Thunder’s track-record-setting performance when fourth in the Tampa Turf Dash in his last start, goes after his 20th career victory on Saturday when he tops a solid field of eight sprint specialists slated to go postward in Tampa Bay Downs’s five-furlong optional-claiming headliner on turf.
The Pennsylvania Horse Breeders Association named its divisional champions for the 2014 racing season, led by Grade 1 winner Real Solution.
The Santa Anita Handicapping Challenge takes place Saturday and Sunday at the Great Race Place. The $3,500 buy-in event allocates $1,000 from each entry for the prize pool, and the remaining $2,500 acts as a live bankroll, with contestants able to keep whatever amount is left at the end of the tournament. Win, place, show, exacta, and trifecta wagers are all allowed in the contest.
Big Macher lit up the track Wednesday in preparation for the $2 million Golden Shaheen in Dubai – he blazed six furlongs in a bullet 1:09.20.
The exciting 3-year-old Om is on the comeback trail, and though he is merely a maiden winner, trainer Dan Hendricks calls the Munnings colt “as anticipated a horse coming back as I’ve ever had.”
When Shared Belief and California Chrome met in the San Antonio Stakes last month, the race seemed like a passing of the torch: Shared Belief won so easily that he became the front-runner for the Horse of the Year title that California Chrome won last year.
