ARCADIA, Calif. – The postponement of the Anoakia Stakes due to insufficient entries shifts the focus to maiden fillies with stakes potential in the first and last races Sunday at Santa Anita.
Splendora and Margarita Girl make their second starts as probable favorites in races 1 and 8, respectively. Expectations are sky-high for both. The Anoakia, not so much. A sprint stakes for 2-year-old fillies, it attracted just four entries and was written back as an “extra” for Oct. 25.
ETOBICOKE, Ontario – Trainer Bill Tharrenos has a contender for both $100,000 Ontario-sired stakes for 2-year-olds on Sunday at Woodbine – My Boy Bruce in the Frost King and I Love to Win in the South Ocean, which is for fillies. Both races are 6 1/2 furlongs.
Based at Gulfstream Park during the winter and at Woodbine the remainder of the year, Tharrenos has won at a good 24 percent clip this year, scoring with 40 of 169 starters heading into this week.
Free Like a Girl emerged from her win in the $100,000 Magnolia on Oct. 11 at Delta Downs in good order and will likely see stakes action in December at Oaklawn Park.
Trainer Chasey Deville Pomier said Tuesday that the $150,000 Mistletoe for fillies and mares at a mile Dec. 14 is a target for the mare, who is the all-time leading earner among Louisiana-breds at $1.9 million.
Last December, Free Like a Girl ran in her native Louisiana and won the Ladies Distaff on Champions Day at Fair Grounds, but that race is not on the schedule for 2024.
Alpine Princess has graded stakes options in New York and Kentucky following her powerful win in last month’s $200,000 Remington Park Oaks.
Trainer Brad Cox said Tuesday that the filly could make her next start in either the Grade 3, $300,000 Chilukki at a mile Nov. 23 at Churchill Downs, the Grade 3, $400,000 Falls City at 1 1/8 miles Nov. 28 at Churchill, or the Grade 3, $200,000 Comely at 1 1/8 miles Nov. 30 at Aqueduct.
“Those are all races we will kind of keep an eye on,” Cox said.
Unload won the most significant race of his career on dirt and will be moving back to the surface Saturday night for the $200,000 Downs at Albuquerque Handicap.
Unload is the 123-pound highweight for the 1 1/8-mile race that drew seven, including Grade 3 winner Giant Game and Mine That Bird’s half-brother Mine That Star.
The popular Silver Prospector will be going for his third straight win of the Remington Park meet on Saturday night, in a no-conditions allowance over 1 1/16 miles.
The earner of $1.6 million is part of a field of six that includes Paluxy, the 2023 winner of the Governor’s Cup, and Without a Trace, the runner-up in this year’s edition, who is coming off an allowance win at Remington.
Locked, a Grade 1 winner at 2, makes his long-awaited 3-year-old debut in a second-level allowance Saturday at Aqueduct that goes as the first race on a 12-race program.
Locked was also entered in the Perryville Stakes at Keeneland on Saturday but will run at Aqueduct, trainer Todd Pletcher said Thursday.
Valuation Metric may be the only maiden among the eight horses entered in Saturday’s $150,000 Awad Stakes at Aqueduct but he could also be the horse to beat in the 1 1/16-mile turf stakes for 2-year-olds.
Valuation Metric was beaten a head in a Sept. 14 maiden race at Aqueduct, a race in which he controlled the pace and then got embroiled in a stretch duel with Barricade before coming up on the wrong side of a head bob to that rival. Valuation Metric finished 2 3/4 lengths ahead of Davy Crockett, who came out of that race to win his maiden last weekend.
