The Phipps Stable may no longer operate with the size and scope it once did, but it still is very much an active participant in Thoroughbred racing. Its numbers may currently be the lightest they’ve been, but there is at least one colt who carries the hopes of getting this legendary stable back to the spring classics.
WHO'S HOT
Todd Pletcher. One week after winning the Grade 3 Holy Bull with Nearly, Pletcher won the Sam F. Davis with Renegade, who made a solid 3-year-old debut, closing on a Tampa Bay Downs track that favored forwardly placed runners. Pletcher will look to keep the momentum rolling Saturday with Courting in the Grade 2 Risen Star.
King Leatherbury, the Hall of Fame trainer who rose to prominence in the 1970s and dominated Maryland racing for three decades, died at his home on Tuesday. He was 92.
In a training career that spanned 64 years and 36,256 starts, Leatherbury won 6,508 races, the fifth most in the history of North American racing. His horses scored 154 stakes victories, won 23 graded stakes, and $64.6 million in purse money.
“If I wanted something on my tombstone,” Leatherbury told America’s Best Racing in 2024, “it would just be, ‘He won races.’ ”
Ingrid Mason, a trainer based at Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs, Ark., has been banned indefinitely by the track after a recent search of her barn turned up hypodermic needles and syringes, according to Mason and a stewards’ ruling.
The regional stakes winners Express Kid and Daneyko will meet shippers from New York and Southern California next Sunday in the $500,000 Sunland Park Derby in New Mexico.
The 1 1/16-mile race will offer Kentucky Derby points to the first five finishers on a scale of 20-10-6-4-2.
The Sunland Derby drew a field of eight when entries were taken on Sunday. First post for the card that also features the $250,000 Sunland Park Oaks led by Bottle of Rouge is 12:25 p.m. Mountain.
ARCADIA, Calif. - Managing the short-term race schedules of top-class 3-year-olds was on the minds of several trainers at Santa Anita on Sunday, a day after the Grade 3 Robert Lewis Stakes.
Plutarch, Intrepido and Secured Freedom swept the top three positions in the $101,000 Lewis at a mile, in their first starts of the year.
ARCADIA, Calif. – By his own admission, jockey Florent Geroux acknowledged his decision to relocate from Fair Grounds to Santa Anita, smack in the middle of winter, was curiously timed.
“Came a little bit late to the party,” Geroux said Friday. “I got here last night. Last-minute decision.”
Ms. Tart, who won the Wishing Well Stakes on Friday night at Turfway Park, is likely to be bred this spring, trainer John Ennis said prior to the race. But that doesn’t necessarily mean her 2 3/4-length victory will be her last appearance on track.
Graded stakes-winning millionaire Epic Ride has resumed training for a 5-year-old campaign that trainer John Ennis hopes will be the gelding’s best yet. His early-season target is the Grade 1 Maker’s Mark Mile in April at Keeneland, with a potential prep race at Turfway Park, depending on how his training unfolds.
