Anisette is stabled at Santa Anita most of the year, but when California’s top female turf runner starts at Del Mar on Saturday, it is a virtual homecoming.
“She loves it down here, as she showed last year,” trainer Leonard Powell said Sunday after Anisette had drilled an easy half-mile for the Grade 2 Yellow Ribbon Handicap. After the workout, Powell pronounced her “ready to go.”
She usually is.
Essex Serpent
Gelding by Honor Code – Eileen’s Girl, by Medaglia d’Oro
Bred in Ontario by Conrad Farms
Manfred and Penny Conrad’s homebred Essex Serpent was late to the party, but he is making up for lost time. Unraced at 2, the gelding has two wins and a runner-up effort from three starts this year.
Most recently, he won the Grade 3 Marine Stakes on June 29. His performance was flattered when runner-up Cameo Performance came back to win a stakes at Ellis Park.
ETOBICOKE, Ontario – The 2022 Canadian Horse of the Year Moira tested her mettle in Grade 1 company at Saratoga in her seasonal debut and came away with a solid second-place finish. She was cross-entered in Sunday’s Grade 2 Beverly D. at Colonial, where there are enticements of a $500,000 purse and a Win and You’re In berth to the Breeders’ Cup, and here Saturday in the $200,000 Canadian, a Grade 2 turf stakes over 1 1/8 miles that she won last year.
ETOBICOKE, Ontario – The protagonists in the $503,000 Woodbine Oaks, led by Oaks winner Kin’s Concerto, are expected to take center stage in Saturday’s second leg of the Canadian Triple Tiara, the $250,000 Bison City Stakes.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Friday’s $125,000 Union Avenue Stakes at Saratoga was supposed to rematch Kant Hurry Love and Leeloo, the one-two finishers from the $125,000 Dancin Renee Stakes at Aqueduct on June 23. But Kant Hurry Love will have to scratch, leaving Leeloo as a likely prohibitive favorite in the six-furlong race for New York-bred fillies and mares.
Trainer David Duggan said Wednesday that Kant Hurry Love came out of her last breeze on Friday with an issue.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – With heavy rains from Tropical Storm Debby likely to impact racing at Saratoga on Friday and Saturday, the New York Racing Association plans to card the Grade 1 Fourstardave and Grade 1 Saratoga Derby as contingency races for Sunday’s card.
That means, should the weather dictate that turf racing cannot be conducted Saturday, those two races will be run Sunday, as drawn. They would be run as the final two races on the card and be excluded from horizontal wagers such as the late pick five and pick six.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Jockey Brian Hernandez Jr, who won this year’s Kentucky Derby and Kentucky Oaks, was selected as the winner of the Mike Venezia Award, presented annually to a jockey who displays the extraordinary sportsmanship and citizenship that personified Venezia, who died as the result of injuries suffered in a spill in 1988. Venezia won more than 2,300 races during his 25-year career.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – For the first time in nearly two decades trainer Ian Wilkes did not take stalls at Saratoga for the summer but he won’t go the entire meet without running a horse here.
Wilkes is pointing Just Basking to the Grade 1 Alabama on Aug. 17 and Positano Sunset to the Grade 1 Ballerina on Aug. 24. The Alabama will be run at 1 1/4 miles, the Ballerina at seven furlongs.
Grand Mo the First is going green.
He won the Bear’s Den Stakes on turf Saturday at Gulfstream Park in his first start since the Kentucky Derby, and grass racing will be a priority going forward, trainer Victor Barboza Jr. said Tuesday.
“I prefer him on the turf,” Barboza said.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Master of The Seas, a three-time Grade 1 winner in the United States, including last year’s Breeders’ Cup Mile, will scratch from Saturday’s Grade 1 Fourstardave Handicap at Saratoga due to a foot bruise. Chris Connett, assistant to trainer Charlie Appleby, announced the news Wednesday.
Depending how quickly the horse recovers, he could train up to the Woodbine Mile on Sept. 14, Connett said.
“It’s on the table,” Connett said. “He’ll have a few easy days and then hopefully we’ll be back to normal with him.”
