John Shear Stakes to be offered again during spring meet

The $100,000 John Shear Stakes for 3-year-old turf sprinters was scheduled for Sunday at Santa Anita, but failed to draw sufficient entries.

Sunday is the closing day of the track’s winter-spring meeting.

Racing secretary Jason Egan said on Thursday that the Shear Stakes will be reintroduced as a potential race for the opening day of the track’s spring meeting, on April 17. The Shear Stakes is scheduled for about 6 1/2 furlongs on the hillside turf course.

The spring meeting runs through June 14.

The Grade 3 Royal Heroine Stakes at a mile on April 25 is the first graded stakes for fillies and mares on turf at the spring meeting. The field for the $100,000 Royal Heroine Stakes may include May Day Ready, a multiple stakes winner in Kentucky who joined trainer Richard Mandella’s stable durin the winter.

May Day Ready, owned by KatieRich Stable, worked five furlongs in 1:00.60 at Santa Anita on Thursday.

“We’re hoping everything goes well for that,” Mandella said of the Royal Heroine.

A 4-year-old filly, May Day Ready has won 4 of 10 starts and earned $1,306,775. Previously trained by Joseph Lee, May Day Ready was second by 1 1/4 lengths to the European import Lake Victoria in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf at Del Mar in 2024, her only previous start in California.

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