ARCADIA, Calif. – Triple Crown winner American Pharoah zoomed a half-mile in 46.60 seconds at Santa Anita on Monday, the last workout of a legendary career that ends Saturday in the Breeders’ Cup Classic at Keeneland.
If the ease of Monday’s workout is an indication, American Pharoah’s status as the favorite for the BC Classic is well deserved.
LEXINGTON, Ky. – After a minor hiccup last week, all has gone according to plan for Beholder, who showed her readiness to take on males on Saturday in the Breeders’ Cup Classic with a five-furlong drill at Keeneland on Monday that Daily Racing Form clocked in 59.27 seconds.
LEXINGTON, Ky. – With a strong threat of rain midweek and the potential for a soft turf course this weekend, trainer Bill Mott called an audible Monday, electing to enter Lea in Friday’s $1 million Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile instead of Saturday’s $2 million Mile on turf.
When Mott pre-entered Lea on Oct. 19, he listed the Mile as his first preference and the Dirt Mile as his second preference. But soft turf could compromise Lea’s chances in the Mile, Mott said, despite the fact that he finished second in the Woodbine Mile over a course labeled “yielding” last month.
The millionaire Quarter Horse mare Matabari was retired due to a tendon injury earlier this week, a defection with implications on the $600,000 Champion of Champions at Los Alamitos on Dec. 12.
Matabari held an automatic berth for the Champion of Champions for a win against males in the Los Alamitos Winter Championship in February. She has not started since that race.
The connections of horses who pre-entered two oversubscribed Breeders’ Cup races were given a couple of extra days, until Monday, to declare their preference. Siding Spring lended trainer Mark Casse a hand ahead of that deadline with an impressive work at Churchill Downs that had the trainer giving the nod to the Juvenile over the Juvenile Turf.
:: BREEDERS’ CUP 2015: Pre-entered horses, odds, comments, and videos
Kentucky Downs in Franklin, Ky., and Churchill Downs in Louisville have submitted to the state racing commission amended 2016 dates applications that avoid overlaps in September as part of an overall agreement on live race dates in the fall, according to representatives of both tracks.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Darrel McHargue, a retired champion jockey and longtime steward at California tracks, was named chief steward for the state Thursday at the monthly meeting of the California Horse Racing Board.
McHargue, 61, will start in the newly created position Dec. 26. McHargue currently is a steward at Golden Gate Fields in Northern California and will remain in that position until the conclusion of that meeting Dec. 20.
The waiting is the hardest part.
Fellowship, the winner of the $500,000 In Reality division of the Florida Sire Stakes, was relegated to four deep on the preference list for the $2 million Breeders’ Cup Juvenile. The race drew 19 pre-entrants. Only 14 can run.
:: BREEDERS’ CUP 2015: Pre-entered horses, odds, comments, and videos
Golden Horn worked seven furlongs on Wednesday at Newmarket in England and remains on course to start in the Breeders’ Cup Turf on Oct. 31 at Keeneland, trainer John Gosden said Thursday.
Golden Horn will be the first horse to have won the English Derby and the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe in the same year and to start in the Breeders’ Cup, and his credentials are so strong that overseas betting has him as an odds-on favorite for the BC Turf.
ARCADIA, Calif. – A U.S. Marine Corps pilot who died when his fighter jet crashed Wednesday in the English countryside was the son of K.B. Sareen, the owner of the Grade 2 Del Mar Derby winner Om.
Maj. Taj Sareen was one of six pilots in a squadron flying to Southern California when his jet crashed moments after takeoff, according to published reports. Sareen reportedly ejected from his plane but did not survive. The incident occurred in eastern England, about 30 miles north of Newmarket Racecourse.
