It did not matter where Clovisconnection raced on the West Coast last summer and fall. He won wherever he was sent – Emerald Downs, Santa Rosa, and Fresno.
Unbeaten in his last four starts, all in stakes, Clovisconnection will race for the first time on the hillside turf course at Santa Anita in Sunday’s $100,000 Sensational Star Stakes for California-breds at about 6 1/2 furlongs.
Political Rivalry had a near perfect season as a 2-year-old in 2023, winning his first six starts, including two futurities, before he finished a troubled fifth in a division of the Los Alamitos Two Million Futurity trials in November in his final start.
Any question about Political Rivalry’s form ended when the gelding rebounded to win a division of the El Primero Del Ano Derby trials at 400 yards on March 3 at Los Alamitos.
Dicey will be getting back to her bread-and-butter of distance Monday, when she makes her fourth career appearance in the six-furlong $55,000 Miranda Diane Stakes at Will Rogers Downs in Claremore, Okla.
Dicey has won the Miranda Diane, for Oklahoma-bred fillies and mares, once before in 2022. She was third in last year’s running and seventh in her first appearance in the race in 2020.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – During a decade-plus career in racing operations at Canterbury Park, Andrew Offerman helped revitalize business at the seasonal Minnesota track. After working a year behind-the-scenes at the New York Racing Association, Offerman is now front and center as part of the team that is charged with advancing the future at NYRA.
On Feb. 18, Offerman took over as senior vice president of racing operations, replacing veteran racing official Frank Gabriel, who resigned from that position after a two-year stint.
Four times, Chad Brown has won the Eclipse Award for outstanding trainer. Four times during the last six calendar years, trainer Alice Cohn has saddled a winner. Two of those victories have come via a 4-year-old Gun Runner gelding named Point Proven, who entered the mom-and-pop stable Cohn runs with her head groom and life partner Eddie Madary late last spring. And the longshot Point Proven might have a chance to take down the Brown-trained favorite I’m Very Busy on Saturday at Fair Grounds in the Grade 2, $300,000 Muniz Memorial Stakes.
Sometimes you can’t judge a book by its cover, or a horse by his name.
After all, trainer Jamie Ness first thought he had a stone-cold sprinter with Speedyness.
“When he turned out as a baby, he was flying around the field passing horses, so we nicknamed him ‘Speedy,’ ” said Ness, who bred the gelding under the name Jagger Inc.
NEW ORLEANS – The gang’s not all here.
The second-, third-, fifth-, sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-place finishers from the Risen Star Stakes on Feb. 17 at Fair Grounds return Saturday in the track’s most important race, the Grade 2, $1 million Louisiana Derby. Absent is the horse clearly best, victorious Sierra Leone, whose path toward the Kentucky Derby runs through the Blue Grass Stakes at Keeneland, not New Orleans.
Alpine Princess and Band of Gold already hold points toward a spot in the 150th Kentucky Oaks in six weeks at Churchill Downs. The pair comes to Turfway Park for a matchup with impressive local stakes winner Maxisuperfly, who is seeking to essentially clinch a berth in the Oaks starting gate in Saturday’s $300,000 Bourbonette Oaks.
The Bourbonette, at 1 1/16 miles on the Tapeta, awards points toward the Oaks on a 50-25-15-10-5 scale. Band of Gold currently has 21 points, while Alpine Princess has 20; the cutoff to make the 14-horse field last year was 48 points.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – The speedy No Nay Mets, a three-time stakes winner during his 2-year-old season, will launch his 3-year-old campaign, weather permitting, Saturday at Gulfstream Park when he faces seven rivals in the $100,000 Texas Glitter Stakes. The Texas Glitter is carded at five furlongs on turf, but the weather forecast for both Friday and Saturday was a gloomy one, calling for more than an 80 percent chance of rain over the local area on both days.
If the Texas Glitter comes off the grass, it would be decided at five furlongs over the synthetic Tapeta track.
