ARCADIA, Calif. – A budding rivalry between California-bred stakes winners Grand Slam Smile and Sneaker resumes Saturday at Santa Anita, where Grand Slam Smile has another score to settle.
Three months after she was upset by Sneaker in a California-bred hillside stakes, and two months after she exacted revenge by trouncing Sneaker on dirt, Grand Slam Smile enters the $125,000 Sunshine Millions Filly and Mare Turf Sprint as a borderline slam dunk.
ARCADIA, Calif. – New wrinkles Saturday at Santa Anita include noteworthy firsts in separate $175,000 stakes for California-bred 3-year-olds.
The California Chrome California Cup Derby, race 8, is the first derby of 2026 in California. The dirt route is the first two-turn race for sprint stakes winner Sammy Davis. It could produce the first win by stakes-placed maiden John Metcalfe. Stakes winner Smoovin Saturday is 2 for 2.
ARCADIA, Calif. – The first of five stakes Saturday at Santa Anita took a hit with news that Big City Lights will be scratched from the $125,000 Don Valpredo California Cup Sprint.
Big City Lights, who won the Cal Cup Sprint by more than seven lengths a year ago, was the 2-1 second choice behind 9-5 program favorite Man O Rose. The defection reduces the six-furlong Cal Cup Sprint to just four runners.
He’s 10-1 on the morning line in a listed stakes race, so it’s fair to say that Reagan’s Wit has largely been forgotten.
That’s not so surprising. Reagan’s Wit never won a graded stakes and ended his 3-year-old campaign with a whimper, finishing sixth July 4 in the Manila Stakes at Saratoga.
Reagan’s Wit came out of the Manila with a bone chip in his ankle and makes his first start since in Saturday’s $100,000 Colonel E.R. Bradley at Fair Grounds.
Brad Cox-trained 3-year-old fillies in recent years have made hay in the Fair Grounds dirt-route stakes program. Cox has trained the Fair Grounds Oaks winner four out of the last six years and won the Rachel Alexandra three times during the last four seasons. But while Cox has runners in seven Fair Grounds races Saturday, he starts nothing in the Silverbulletday Stakes for 3-year-old fillies, a race he’s won twice the last three years.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Trainer Bill Mott said he’d prefer not to run Batten Down and Stars and Stripes against one another to open their 2026 campaigns. But with few options available around two turns locally for older horses, such will be the case in Friday’s $87,000 ninth race at Gulfstream Park, to be decided at 1 1/16 miles over the main track.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – When Shadow Surge won Tuesday’s fourth race at Parx, it was the 4,900th career winner trained by Jamie Ness.
Ness, who led all North American trainers in wins in 2025 with 353, will continue the march to 5,000 on Friday at Aqueduct when he sends out Sassafrassness in a starter allowance that serves as the feature on a pedestrian eight-race card.
ARCADIA, Calif. – It’s a big week for comebackers trained by Michael McCarthy, including the star of the stable.
Journalism returns to California this week after a winter freshening in Florida. Grade 1 winner of the Santa Anita Derby, Preakness, and Haskell, Journalism’s 2026 campaign is to be determined. A target under consideration is the Grade 1 Metropolitan Handicap at Saratoga, typically run in June.
Pittsburgh gets another dose of the "Battle of Pennsylvania" this Thursday as the Penguins host the Flyers in one of the NHL's most storied rivalries. With Metro Division points on the line, the intensity at PPG Paints Arena will be at an all-time high.
