OCEANPORT, N.J. - Joe Bravo felt he was little unlucky with Big Blue Kitten in the Grade 2 Monmouth Stakes last month, shaking clear a tad too late to catch Boisterous.
This time Big Blue Kitten got the big prize, the Grade 1, $525,000 United Nations Stakes on Saturday at Monmouth Park.
MIAMI - David Fawkes, who won the 2010 Breeders’ Cup Sprint with Big Drama, is well on his way to going back again after his Bahamian Squall rallied to a 1 3/4-length victory over reigning Sprint champion Trinniberg in the $350,000 Smile Handicap, the co-feature on Saturday’s rich Summit of Speed program at Calder.
The Grade 2 Smile is a Win and You’re In event for the Breeders’ Cup Sprint. Bahamian Squall’s victory was Fawkes’s third in the Smile, following Big Drama during the summer of his championship season and Forty One Carats 10 years earlier.
MIAMI – Stanley Gold sounded more like a horseplayer than a trainer who will send out two of the leading contenders when talking about Saturday’s $350,000, Grade 2 Smile Sprint Handicap at Calder.
“This is one deep, solid field, probably one of the best I’ve seen around here,” Gold said. “There certainly is nobody who looks like a standout, like the horse we have to beat. It’s a great race from a spectator’s standpoint and with a strong field like this, they should get Grade 1 status for the race next year.”
INGLEWOOD, Calif. – A year ago on June 29, trainer Mike Mitchell was undergoing surgery for a brain tumor. Winning a Grade 1 race on the one-year anniversary of that date was a lot better, obviously.
Obviously, utilizing his usual front-running style, and his penchant to keep on going, scored the first Grade 1 win of his career on Saturday at Betfair Hollywood Park in the $300,000 Shoemaker Mile, an emotional victory for everyone connected to Mitchell.
“A year ago was his surgery,” said his wife, Denise. “It’s kind of a big deal.”
INGLEWOOD, Calif. – Comma to the Top earned a fan in jockey Edwin Maldonado when the gelding won the Tom Fool Handicap by a nose at Aqueduct on March 2.
Watching from Southern California, Maldonado was impressed the way that Comma to the Top fought off persistent challengers through the stretch.
“It was the way he did it,” Maldonado said. “He had horses inside and outside of him and fought back and won. He never had a chance to relax.”
INGLEWOOD, Calif. – They can’t keep up with him.
The more that jockey Joe Talamo rides Obviously, the more he sees that the 5-year-old gelding is almost unbeatable as a front-runner. Obviously used that tactic to win his third graded stakes in the last year in the Grade 2 American Handicap at Betfair Hollywood Park on May 25, a performance that makes him a heavy favorite to win Saturday’s $300,000 Shoemaker Mile on turf.
Gentildonna, the 2012 Japanese Horse of the Year, makes her first start of the year in that country in Sunday’s $2,834,639 Takarazuka Kinen at Hanshin Racecourse, a turf marathon with a strong field of older horses.
Gentildonna won the 2012 Japanese Triple Crown for 3-year-old fillies and then beat males in the Japan Cup last November. In her only start this year, Gentildonna was second in the Sheema Classic in Dubai in March.
On Friday in Argentina, Soy Carambolo is a leading contender in the Group 1 Premio Clasico General Belgrano over about 1 9/16 miles. The Clasico Belgrano offers a fees-paid berth to the Breeders' Cup Marathon at Santa Anita in November.
In 2012, Calidoscopio won the Clasico Belgrano and pulled a 17-1 upset in the Marathon. Dream Storm, second to Calidoscopio last year, is part of this year’s Clasico Belgrano, which drew a field of 15.
Soy Carambolo was second in the Group 1 Gran Premio 25 de Mayo in Argentina in May.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – There’s nothing official about it, but the symbolism is hard to miss. The second half of the 2013 racing season in North America gets under way Saturday night with the Stephen Foster Handicap, a Grade 1 race that relegates the Triple Crown to the rearview mirror while shifting a forward focus onto the Breeders’ Cup.
LEXINGTON, Ky. – When Julien Leparoux moved to Southern California last fall to begin riding there on a permanent basis, he did so with a tiny asterisk, permitting himself to return east whenever a turf filly named Centre Court was in the entries.
“She’s a special filly,” said Leparoux. “They wanted to keep me on her even when I’m on the West Coast. I will ride her anytime, for sure.”
