Nobody calls New Orleans a straightforward city. The streets, many still paved in brick, hew to the Mississippi River’s serpentine path. New Orleanians don’t refer to cardinal or ordinal directions. Uptown, The Quarter, the 9th ward, by the lake – local points of reference replace north, south, east, and west.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Chi Town Lady may be the most high-profile name entered in Friday’s $100,000 allowance feature at Aqueduct, but the Grade 1 winner could be compromised by a small field that lacks the pace she needs to be most effective.
Chi Town Lady, winner of the Grade 1 Test at Saratoga in 2022, is likely headed to the breeding shed sometime in 2025 but her connections are using Friday’s one-mile race to see how much more is left in tank of the 5-year-old daughter of Verrazano, who hasn’t raced since a sixth-place finish in the Grade 1 Ballerina on Aug. 24.
Jockeys Flavien Prat, Jose Ortiz, and Brian Hernandez Jr. are among the nationally prominent riders headed to Zia Park on Tuesday for the Land of Enchantment card. Zia has seven stakes that day worth a cumulative $1.1 million, led by the $300,000 Zia Park Derby and $300,000 Zia Park Oaks.
Ortiz will team with trainer Steve Asmussen in all seven stakes. His mounts include supplement Dimatic in the 10-horse Zia Derby, Lemonesse in the 11-horse Zia Oaks, millionaire Jaxon Traveler in the $100,000 Zia Park Sprint, and stakes winner Unload in the $125,000 Championship.
South Florida-based trainer Saffie Joseph Jr. plans to have group of about 16 to 20 horses at Oaklawn Park for the meet that runs from December to May.
The Oaklawn string will be a first for Joseph, who has shipped in for a handful of stakes in the past. Earlier this year, he saddled Skippylongstocking to win the Grade 2, $1.25 million Oaklawn Handicap.
Joseph said he had owners reach out to him about the possibility of setting up a division at Oaklawn.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – White Abarrio, the 2023 Breeders’ Cup Classic winner, will make his much anticipated return following a near six-month layoff Friday at Gulfstream Park in a $62,000 allowance and optional-claiming event going seven furlongs, which drew a field of just five, including his stakes-winning stablemate Mish.
The race is the second of four allowance races on an excellent program that also features an identically conditioned allowance to be decided at one mile. That field of eight is led by Grade 2 winner Steal Sunshine.
