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Lone Star Park opens Thursday night with a strong roster of jockeys and trainers signed on for the 41-date meet that is highlighted by the Lone Star Million Day card and the Summer Turf Festival.
“Those would be our two big open stakes days,” said Bart Lang, director of racing operations for Lone Star.
OZONE PARK, N.Y – Temperatures reaching the 80s in the New York City area this week aren’t the only sign that spring has finally arrived. The return of turf racing to Aqueduct is another. And just in the nick of time.
Filling all-dirt racecard programs all winter into the early part of the spring became increasingly challenging for the New York Racing Association as evidenced by the fact there were only seven races last Friday and eight on Saturday. Short fields had become the norm.
So many horses were entered in a third-level turf allowance carded for 1 1/16 miles on Thursday that the Keeneland racing office split it into two 10-runner fields in races 5 and 9, each with a $140,000 purse.
The first thing you might notice in the first division is the presence of Kentucky Derby runner and graded stakes regular Just a Touch.
HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – Trainer Shea Stuart’s stable has been geared to Arkansas-bred opportunities this meet at Oaklawn Park, and Cybertown, one of his two candidates for the track’s richest offering for statebreds, will be in action Thursday.
Cybertown goes in the sixth race, a first-level allowance route that serves as his final stepping-stone for the $200,000 Arkansas Breeders’ Championship on May 2. Stuart’s other candidate for that stakes race is recent allowance winner Triple Up.
Stuart said about 60 percent of his current stable is made up of Arkansas-breds.
Covfefe was a pure sprinter who won an Eclipse Award in that division. But so far, the mare’s two foals to race seem like very different types.
From the beginning, first foal, Ellen Jay, looked like her mother’s daughter and is a stakes-winning sprinter – albeit on the turf, tapping into the versatility of her sire, Constitution. A runner with a refined, feminine build, she found a rhythm quickly and seemed to steadily improve with each start.
With the option of a Florida-bred stakes at Gulfstream Park on April 25 or an open second-level allowance Wednesday at Tampa Bay Downs, trainer Nolan Ramsey opted for the latter with Raging Fury, who looks for his second straight win at Tampa in the first race on a nine-race card.
A 5-year-old gelding by Ami’s Flatter, Raging Fury has run twice in this second-level allowance/optional $32,000 condition and it’s hard not to concur with Ramsey’s assessment that his effort in defeat on Feb. 28 may have been stronger than the one in victory on March 20.
Chief Wallabee, beaten a half-length when third behind Commandment and The Puma in the Grade 1 Florida Derby on March 28, will most likely be equipped with blinkers when he runs in the Kentucky Derby, trainer Bill Mott said Monday.
“To me, he seemed slightly distracted in his last run,” Mott said Monday. “Something to keep him a little more focused. He’s still a little green.”
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Like trainer Wesley Ward during the spring meet at Keeneland, Arindel Farm has become the dominant force in 2-year-old races this time of year at Gulfstream Park.
Arindel will send out a pair of juvenile fillies, Dorothy and Boots, as key contenders in the first “baby” race of the local season on Thursday. They have also entered a pair, including likely favorite Strike, in the open division of the same 4 1/2-furlong maiden dash here Sunday.
