Gosger, a game second to Journalism in Saturday’s Grade 1 Preakness Stakes at Pimlico, will skip the Belmont Stakes at Saratoga on June 7 in favor of a major stakes for 3-year-olds in July.
Trainer Brendan Walsh said on Wednesday that Gosger has emerged from the Preakness in good condition, and will benefit from a longer period between starts.
“I don’t think we’re going to go” to the Belmont, Walsh said. “I think we’ll give him a little more time.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Top Gun Rocket was popular among horsemen and horseplayers alike when he won a $40,000 claiming race at Keeneland on April 19. Not only was he sent off the 4-5 favorite in a field of eight, but 28 entities put in a claim for the 4-year-old son of Into Mischief.
Trainer Gary Capuano will send out his first juvenile runners of 2025 at Laurel Park in maiden special weights on Friday and Saturday. After an astounding campaign in the local 2-year-old division last year, Capuano is grappling with high expectations and is doing his best to manage them.
“Last year was crazy,” Capuano said. “Everything really fell into place. I told my help and my owners, I said, ‘Don’t expect that to happen again this year.’ That was just one of those years. Every 2-year-old I ran, except for one, won, and a lot of them kept going.”
For the most part, racing life at Ruidoso Downs in New Mexico has returned to normal in advance of Friday’s opening day, a change from the natural disasters last June and July that led to the cancellation of the final six weeks of the meeting.
ETOBICOKE, Ontario – Horses have been doubling up with regularity and the track has been biased toward the inside during the early days of the Woodbine meet. Get Out the Vote in Friday’s fourth race fits the aforementioned trends and could be regarded as a single in the lone pick four on the sparse seven-race card.
A 5-year-old mare by the late More Than Ready, Get Out the Vote was campaigned sporadically before joining trainer Eric Raghunath’s string this year. She finished a distant third behind a runaway winner off a 5 1/2-month layoff on opening day April 26.
ARCADIA, Calif. – If it’s a turf race at Santa Anita, trainer Phil D’Amato probably is involved. In any race at any track, jockey Umberto Rispoli probably is saving ground.
D’Amato and Rispoli team up in the featured fifth race Friday at Santa Anita with lightly raced Favor to You, a turf filly Rispoli rode to a rail-skimming maiden win last out at the same six-furlong distance she runs Friday. Can she make it two in a row? That is the question.
Queen Maxima has established herself as a leader of the turf sprint division, riding a four-race win streak, including a course record-setting performance in the Grade 3 Unbridled Sidney on May 1 at Churchill Downs. Several who finished behind her, led by runner-up Crown Imperial, find easier company Friday in an allowance/optional-claiming race with a purse of $141,000 for fillies and mares sprinting 5 1/2 furlongs on the Churchill turf.
Trainer Neil Pessin has announced his retirement from training, effective immediately. His retirement was first reported by the Thoroughbred Daily News.
“I’d like to keep training, but financially it’s very tough, and I was down to two maiden turf horses, one maiden-claimer, and it’s just not financially feasible to keep going,” Pessin told TDN, while also indicating that he plans to remain involved in the industry in some capacity. “I didn’t want to quit, but I really have no choice but to do so.”
Kentucky-based trainer Brendan Walsh came home without the hardware from Pimlico’s major 3-year-old stakes, but with a hefty check, as his barn’s consistency through the weekend earned him top placing in the trainer bonus system offered by 1/ST Racing to horsemen in stakes races over Preakness weekend, May 16-17.
The late Uncle Mo recorded an exacta of sorts in Saturday’s Preakness Stakes, which serves to underline his continuing legacy. The victorious Journalism is out of Uncle Mo’s daughter Mopotism, the late stallion’s latest accomplishment as a broodmare sire. Runner-up Gosger is by Uncle Mo’s champion son and leading heir, Nyquist.
