Calculator, the winner of last month’s Sham Stakes at Santa Anita, emerged from a workout at San Luis Rey Downs on Saturday with an injury that will sideline him six months and takes him off the Triple Crown trail, trainer Peter Miller said Sunday.
Led by Eclipse Award winners American Pharoah and Take Charge Brandi, along with Breeders’ Cup Juvenile winner Texas Red, a total of 429 3-year-olds were announced on Saturday by Churchill Downs as the early nominations to this year’s Triple Crown.
Because it’s a rare Kentucky Derby prep race still contested on a synthetic surface, the Grade 3, $550,000 Spiral Stakes at Turfway Park on March 21 seems likely to attract “niche” horses with success on such types of tracks. Firespike, is Spiral-bound by way of another direction – from Ocala, Fla., where he won the OBS Championship Stakes on Tuesday by 2 1/4 lengths.
Leave the Light On, the winner of the Remsen Stakes in his last start, injured a hind ankle in a workout last weekend, needs surgery, and is off the Triple Crown trail, trainer Chad Brown said Thursday.
In the Sam F. Davis Stakes at Tampa Bay Downs, I’m going with My Johnny Be Good, whose only outings on dirt in his last two starts were a decided cut above good efforts on Polytrack in his first two starts.
American Pharoah, the Eclipse Award-winning 2-year-old male of 2014, and Texas Red, the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile winner, were assigned the co-high weight of 126 pounds in the Experimental Free Handicap, a weight-based ranking of the previous year’s 2-year-olds put out annually by The Jockey Club that was released on Thursday.
Dodging one storm that canceled training here Saturday and avoiding a second storm that will likely cancel training here on Tuesday, El Kabeir managed to get in an important five-furlong workout Sunday morning in preparation for the Grade 3 Withers Stakes at Aqueduct on Feb. 7.
Upstart was one of the elite 2-year-olds of 2014, and he served notice in his 2015 debut that he belongs among the very best of contenders for this year’s Kentucky Derby.
I would be surprised if Upstart doesn’t run another solid race and get another solid Beyer in the Holy Bull. On the Beyer Speed Figures, Barbados is definitely the horse to beat in the Hutcheson.
Trainer Neil Howard said Eagle had come out of his seventh-place finish in the Lecomte Stakes at Fair Grounds in apparently good physical condition. Howard said he and owner-breeder Will Farish plan to push on to the Grade 2 Risen Star on Feb. 21 unless Eagle gives Howard cause to think otherwise in coming weeks.
