The pick six carryover of $44,200 that was to have been part of Monday’s Memorial Day card at Aqueduct will be transferred to the June 6 card at Saratoga after two legs of Monday’s sequence were transferred from the turf to the dirt after the wager had begun.
By New York State Gaming Commission rule, when two or more races of a multi-race sequence change surfaces, the carryover cannot be distributed on that day.
Though they all won’t run, on Monday as many as 13 3-year-olds remained under consideration for the $2 million Belmont Stakes on June 8 at Saratoga.
Sierra Leone, the Kentucky Derby runner-up, looms the probable favorite in the race even if both Kentucky Derby winner and Preakness runner-up Mystik Dan and Preakness winner Seize the Grey enter the race. While Seize the Grey is confirmed to start, a decision on whether Mystik Dan will run likely won’t be made until over the weekend after the horse works, trainer Kenny McPeek said Monday.
ARCADIA, Calif. - Endlessly, Muth and Stronghold, California-based 3-year-olds who won major stakes earlier this spring, are scheduled to start in lucrative stakes in New Jersey and New York in July.
Endlessly, winner of the Grade 3 Jeff Ruby Steaks at Turfway Park and ninth in the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs on May 4, will start in the Grade 1 Belmont Derby, a $750,000 race at 1 3/16 miles on turf at Aqueduct on July 6, trainer Michael McCarthy said.
Will Rogers Downs in Claremore, Okla., which closed out its Thoroughbred meet May 15, was struck by a tornado Saturday night and officials are in the process of assessing the extent of damage to the property that includes a casino, according to a spokesman for the track located near Tulsa.
A National Weather Service representative said Sunday that survey teams are currently labeling the storm an EF-3 category based on damages, but added the survey was ongoing. The highest tornado rating is EF-5.
Golden Gate Fields will not race on Friday because of insufficient entries, the sixth such cancellation since mid-April, the track announced on Sunday.
The track has only five days of racing remaining - next Saturday and June 2, and June 7-9 - before the track is permanently closed.
The cancellation of Friday’s races was announced at lunchtime on Sunday. Shortly before the cancellation, the track sent an update to horsemen, indicating that five proposed races had drawn at least five entries and seven proposed races had attracted four entries.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Sierra Leone turned in his penultimate work for the Belmont Stakes on Saturday over the Oklahoma training track at Saratoga, breezing five furlongs in 1:02.53 in company with Domestic Product, per Daily Racing Form. Shortly thereafter, trainer Chad Brown announced that Flavien Prat would replace Tyler Gaffalione aboard the Kentucky Derby runner-up in the final leg of the Triple Crown.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Some may argue that Mike Repole owns the best 3-year-old in the country even in the wake of reigning juvenile champion and Florida Derby winner Fierceness’s 15th-place finish in the Kentucky Derby. That horse would be the undefeated and untested Mindframe, who registered a 103 Beyer Speed Figure in his debut and has captured his only two starts by a combined 21 1/4 lengths.
Seize the Grey, the Preakness winner, will run in the $2 million Belmont Stakes on June 8 at Saratoga, trainer D. Wayne Lukas confirmed Tuesday afternoon.
“He bounced back really well, exceptional,” Lukas said Tuesday though he had hinted on Sunday he was leaning toward running. “[Bob] Baffert and I were looking at him [Sunday] and Baffert couldn’t believe how he held his flesh.”
The Blood-Horse was the first to report the news.
BALTIMORE – Once a coach, always a coach.
Whether it be in his days as a high school basketball coach in Wisconsin, or the long list of successful trainers he’s sent out in the world of Thoroughbred racing, D. Wayne Lukas has always gotten enjoyment out of coaching.
ARCADIA, Calif. - Balnikhov’s victory in the Grade 3 Dinner Party Stakes at Pimlico on Saturday gave the 5-year-old gelding a victory in the first of a three-race series over the next eight months that encompasses races at Santa Anita and Gulfstream Park.
A sweep of the series is worth a $2.5 million bonus. The problem is one of the races is held at Santa Anita on a turf course Balnikhov does not seem to prefer.
