Uncle Mo, crowned juvenile champion at Monday’s Eclipse Award ceremonies, has been galloping steadily at the Palm Meadows training facility and according to his trainer, Todd Pletcher, is almost up to his first breeze as a 3-year-old. He will make his first start of the season in the March 12 Tampa Bay Derby.
Most first-level allowance races are ordinary affairs, rarely eliciting more than passing interest other than from handicappers trying to find a winner to bet on. But first-level allowance races for 3-year-olds during the first two months of the Gulfstream Park meet are anything but blase, usually producing one or more contenders for the major Kentucky Derby preps to be decided later in the session.
Trainer Donnie Von Hemel sent out two 3-year-old winners opening weekend at Oaklawn. Caleb's Posse took the Smarty Jones and Alternation won a three-way photo in an allowance race. Both will be nominated for the Grade 3, $250,000 Southwest at a mile at Oaklawn on Feb. 21, and the Grade 2, $300,000 Risen Star at 1 1/16 miles at Fair Grounds on Feb. 19.
Only five horses were entered in the Lecomte, the first of three graded stakes races for 3-year-olds to be run at the Fair Grounds meet.
Flashpoint, on the basis of a scintillating 6 1/4-length debut victory at Aqueduct on Saturday, will soon be headed to south Florida, where he will be pointed to the Grade 2, $150,000 Hutcheson Stakes at seven furlongs on Feb. 26.
Tapizar’s win in the Grade 3 Sham Stakes at Santa Anita on Saturday confirmed trainer Steve Asmussen’s belief that the colt will play an important role in the build-up to the Kentucky Derby.
On Saturday, trainer Steve Asmussen threw down the gauntlet in the 3-year-old division at Santa Anita, sending out Tapizar to an impressive victory in the Grade 3, $100,000 Sham Stakes.
Comma to the Top, who has emerged as the leading 3-year-old in California in the last two months, is likely to make his next start in the $200,000 El Camino Real Derby at Golden Gate Fields on Feb. 12.
DRF Weekend: A new heart gave trainer Kathy Ritvo another shot at life. Now she has a chance to make the Kentucky Derby. With some luck and a little help from a promising 3-year-old named Mucho Macho Man, she might just end up watching the 2011 Derby with her doctor from one of the trainers’ boxes at Churchill Downs.
Smart buys like The Factor have pinhooker Kim Valerio's name emerging on the sales circuit.
