His fan base is growing, his odds are dropping, and Shared Belief is expected to solidify his position as the nation’s top older horse when he starts favored Saturday in the Grade 1 Santa Anita Handicap.
Trainer Larry Jones sent out the one-two finishers, I’m a Chatterbox and Lovely Maria, on Feb. 21 in the Rachel Alexandra Stakes at Fair Grounds, and his stable’s depth in the 3-year-old filly division runs deeper than just that pair.
Conquest Two Step has snuck into the California sprint division this winter.
If he is right, Salutos Amigos is clearly the horse to beat in Saturday’s Grade 3, $200,000 Tom Fool Handicap at Aqueduct.
Before Gulfstream halted last Saturday’s card due to torrential rain, I liked the outside horse to beat the inside-drawn favorite in the Grade 2 Swale. With that race reset for Saturday, that’s still my opinion – only the specific outside-based choice has changed in a redrawn race from X Y Jet to Bluegrass Singer.
If you’ve been hibernating the last four weeks – a perfectly reasonable response to the brutal winter weather in so much of the country – you may want to emerge from your den on Saturday: There’s important racing at four tracks, including 11 graded stakes worth nearly $4 million. March is coming in like a lion in more ways than one.
Getting Wicked Strong back to the races here this winter has been a major priority for trainer Jimmy Jerkens since he shipped his star to south Florida last fall, but Wicked Strong’s much-anticipated 2015 debut in Saturday’s $300,000 Gulfstream Park Handicap has taken a backseat since Jerkens’s father, Hall of Fame horseman Allen Jerkens, was hospitalized and put into an induced coma last weekend.
Four Leaf Chief has accomplished more than all of his rivals in Saturday night’s $100,000 Pelican at Delta Downs, but he might not go favored in the feature.
If El Kabeir is to be considered a legitimate Kentucky Derby contender, he will have to bounce back from his loss in the Withers when he faces nine mostly new faces in the Gotham, which like the Withers is run at 1 1/16 miles over the inner track.
It took several starts for Prospect Park to finally get the hang of what he was supposed to do, but once he figured it out, he came around quickly, and now ranks as one of the most-intriguing Kentucky Derby prospects in Southern California.
