WHO’S HOT
The lone newcomer to this week’s Derby Watch top 20 is Forevamo, who finished second in the Risen Star Stakes last Saturday at Fair Grounds. He is 30-1 on the Kentucky Derby future line set by Mike Watchmaker, Daily Racing Form’s national handicapper. Gun Runner, the Risen Star winner, and Mo Tom, who finished a troubled third in the race, both have been lowered to 15-1 on Watchmaker’s line after being 20-1 a week ago.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Rockingham Ranch has purchased a majority interest in the top sprinter X Y Jet from Gelfenstein Farm, with the goal of sending him to Dubai for the rich Golden Shaheen on March 26, according to Shannon Potter, who brokered the deal for the buyer.
Jockey Juan Hernandez won three consecutive races at Golden Gate Fields on Saturday to reach the 1,000-victory mark in the United States.
Hernandez began his win streak with Boldly True ($16.60) in the fifth race in which jockey Kyle Frey sustained injuries when his front-running horse ducked out and unseated him.
He then won with Ryder’s Starlight ($14) in the sixth race and reached the milestone in the seventh race when She’s Flush ($17.20) beat odds-on favorite Bottle Blonde to the wire by a neck. The $1 all-Hernandez pick three returned $167.50.
Jockey Kyle Frey sustained a fractured left femur (leg) and right humerus (arm) in a fifth-race spill at Golden Gate Fields on Saturday.
Frey was leading in the stretch aboard Pure Comedy when the 3-year-old colt ducked out badly under left-handed urging.
Frey was unseated and struck by Midnight Ming. Pure Comedy was not injured.
Frey, 24, the 2011 Eclipse Award winner as the nation’s leading apprentice, was taken to Highland Hospital in Oakland after the accident. He currently ranks third in the jockey standings with 23 wins.
Apprentice Kevin Orozco, riding only the fourth mount of his career, guided Elle Woods Too to her maiden victory in her 18th start to get the first win of his career Friday at Golden Gate Fields.
Orozco, a 19-year-old from El Mirage, Calif., put the 4-year-old filly on the lead in the six-furlong maiden race. Elle Woods Too, coming off a pair of route tries, withstood a late challenge from Flying Tee, under leading rider Russell Baze, to win by one length in 1:11.04. Elle Woods Too returned $15.40.
Mark Casse’s life these days reads like the opening sentence from Charles Dickens’s “A Tale of Two Cities.” For him, it is the best of times and the worst of times.
A seven-time Sovereign Award-winning trainer in Canada and a finalist again for 2015, Casse has one of the most powerful barns in North America, one that gets stronger every year. Last year, he earned his first Breeders’ Cup wins with Eclipse Award winner Tepin and likely Sovereign champion 2-year-old filly Catch a Glimpse.
Airoforce
By Colonel John – Chocolate Pop, by Cuvee
($350,000 purchase by East West Stable at 2015 Ocala Breeders’ Sales Co. April sale of 2-year-olds in training)
Airoforce proved his versatility last year, winning two-turn graded stakes on turf, in the Bourbon at Keeneland, and dirt, in the Kentucky Jockey Club at Churchill Downs. It remains to be seen what the colt’s best surface is.
