El Padrino, Verrazano’s half-brother who won last year’s Grade 2 Risen Star Stakes, has been retired from racing.
The 4-year-old Pulpit colt missed his planned seasonal debut earlier this year in the Donn Handicap due to the recurrence of an old injury, according to Let’s Go Stable principals Bryan Sullivan and Kevin Scatuorchio.
Rosie Napravnik will ride Mylute in the May 4 Kentucky Derby, according to a statement put out Tuesday by GoldMark Farm, which owns Mylute in partnership with Whisper Hill Farm.
Calvin Borel will ride Revolutionary and Mike Smith has picked up the mount on Palace Malice in the Kentucky Derby on May 4, trainer Todd Pletcher said Monday.
Revolutionary won the Louisiana Derby with Javier Castellano, who since has chosen to ride Normandy Invasion in the Derby.
Vyjack, the multiple graded stakes winning 3-year-old and Kentucky Derby candidate, has been based at the Fair Hill Training Center in Maryland for several days, in part to take advantage of that facility’s hyperbaric chamber to aid with the gelding’s respiratory issues.
The original plan called for Vyjack to return to New York in time to catch a Sunday flight to Kentucky along with Wood Memorial 1-2 finishers Verrazano and Normandy Invasion.
INDIANTOWN GAP, Fla. - The fog that still shrouded much of the racetrack shortly after sunrise Sunday morning at Payson Park proved to be more of an issue for onlookers than it did for Florida Derby winner Orb, who breezed an easy half-mile in the first of his three scheduled workouts prior to the Kentucky Derby.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – When the New York Racing Association Reorganization Board approved this summer’s Saratoga stakes schedule at its regular meeting on Thursday, it reinstated two Grade 1 steeplechase races that were originally left off the calendar.
The $100,000 A.P. Smithwick Memorial and the $150,000 New York Turf Writers Cup Steeplechase will be part of the usual nine-race steeplechase program to be run during the Saratoga meet, which runs from July 19 thru Sept. 2. As was the case last summer, steeplechase races will be run each Thursday, with two run every other Thursday.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert, whose stable has had several instances of horses suffering sudden death in the last 16 months, released a statement on Friday, describing the loss of the horses as “personally troubling and of great sadness to me.”
In the statement, Baffert said that he was working with “everyone, including the California Horse Racing Board, my veterinarians and staff at the track to find the causes of the unexplained deaths.”
Trevor McCarthy, the 18-year-old who ranks first among apprentice jockeys in North America in 2013, will be sidelined for eight to 10 weeks with a broken left tibia sustained in a training accident Thursday at Laurel Park.
McCarthy is scheduled to undergo surgery on Monday, according to his agent, Scott Silver. Silver said McCarthy, son of former Mid-Atlantic star rider Mike McCarthy, was injured when a horse he was working wheeled and dropped the rider to the ground.
“It really wasn’t a bad fall,” Silver said. “It was the way he landed.”
HOT SPRINGS, Ark. - Will Take Charge put in some prep work for the Kentucky Derby early Friday morning at Oaklawn Park, where he worked a mile in 1:40.80. He is scheduled to ship to Churchill Downs on Sunday, according to his trainer, D. Wayne Lukas.
Will Take Charge won the Grade 2, $600,000 Rebel at Oaklawn in his last start March 16, and earlier this week his connections made the decision to train him up to the Kentucky Derby. The other option had been a start in the Blue Grass at Keeneland.
