There will be no shortage of 2-year-old stakes action Saturday at Gulfstream Park West and trainer Stanley Gold will be in the thick of things. He has three starters in the $100,000 Juvenile Sprint, led by Sing Praises, and two representatives in the $100,000 Juvenile Filly Sprint, topped by Leap Year Luck.
Thoroughbred Charities of America (TCA) will host its 25th annual stallion season auction from Jan. 5 through Jan. 10, 2015, with bids accepted via telephone and online.
While Chad Brown waits to hear whether he will get the opportunity to train Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Turf one-two finishers Dayatthespa and Stephanie’s Kitten next year, the search for possible replacements begins in Saturday’s Grade 3, $200,000 Long Island Handicap at Aqueduct.
Peintre Celebre, the broodmare sire of the top two finishers in Tuesday’s Group 1 Melbourne Cup, has been pensioned from stallion duty at Coolmore’s Castlehyde Stud in Ireland.
Last Saturday at Santa Anita a cowboy hat appeared nearing the top of a clubhouse escalator that rose to reveal David Romero Flores, international man of equitation. A trim, fit 46, Flores was sporting a stylish Van Dyke and Western threads, while greeting well-wishers who recalled his work with top horses as far back as Marquetry and as recent as Turbulent Descent.
My strategy in the River City at Churchill Downs will be to bet Villandry, an 8-1 shot, as a value horse in the win pool, while emphasizing him in a late pick three play.
Upstart, third in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, is back in New York, but only briefly.
The $100,000 Sunshine Millions Turf Preview for Florida-breds at Gulfstream Park West on Saturday is completely wide-open and will match four colts and geldings against a pair of 4-year-old fillies.
Parx racetrack outside Philadelphia has distributed a waiver to jockeys riding at the track seeking to indemnify the track from any injuries they may suffer, generating a heated response from the Jockeys’ Guild.
Last year, Kiaran McLaughlin captured one of the four graded stakes run at Aqueduct on the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend. He came within a nose and a neck of winning two more. That was with three horses. This year, McLaughlin is planning a full-out assault on the four graded stakes held on the final Saturday of November at Aqueduct.
