Denis of Cork, unbeaten in three starts, is a Florida-bred colt with the credentials to become the state's seventh Kentucky Derby winner.
A bay colt by Harlan's Holiday out of Unbridled Girl, by Unbridled, Denis of Cork won the Grade 3 Southwest Stakes at Oaklawn Park last Monday for owners William and Suzanne Warren.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - Of the 25 leading candidates for the Kentucky Derby on Daily Racing Form's Derby Watch, five sold as 2-year-olds in training last year and three more were bought back at those select auctions.
The colts on Derby Watch who sold are Court Vision, Into Mischief, Denis of Cork, J Be K, and Visionaire. And the BreezeFig gurus at DataTrack International identified three more colts on Derby Watch who also went through the sale but were unsold (El Gato Malo, Cool Coal Man, and Fierce Wind).
ARCADIA, Calif. - Nashoba's Key, the California-bred horse of the year for 2007, occupies the first stall at trainer Carla Gaines's Santa Anita stable. She deserves it. With a career record of 7 wins in 9 starts and earnings of $1,072,090, Nashoba's Key is the finest horse owned by Warren Williamson and trained by Gaines.
The stall next to Nashoba's Key is filled by an unraced 4-year-old filly named Nashoba's Excess, a half-sister to Nashoba's Key.
ARCADIA, Calif. - The 3,223 California-breds registered with the Jockey Club from the 2006 crop marked an 11 percent decline from the 2005 crop and the lowest number of foals registered in the state in nearly a decade.
Earlier this week, the Jockey Club released its online fact book, which included state-by-state foal crops for 2006, the most recent available. California ranked third in number of foals behind Kentucky (10,346) and Florida (4,296), a position it has held annually since relinquishing second to Florida in 1994.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - With his scintillating victory in the Risen Star Stakes at the Fair Grounds, Pyro galloped into favoritism among individual interests in the Kentucky Derby Future Wager.
The colt's prominence this season is no surprise, as this handsome bay son of the A.P. Indy stallion Pulpit was ranked second last year to only the divisional champion and Breeders' Cup Juvenile winner, War Pass, who finished ahead of Pyro in that race and the Champagne.
The gold rush east of the Mississippi continues to be a race to Pennsylvania. The lure of slots-enriched purses and the growing breeders' program have stallion owners from across the country eager to stand their horses in the Keystone State.
A total of 20 stallions new to Pennsylvania have already been committed to stand the 2008 season - with additional prospects announced nearly daily. That is more than the number of new stallions to surrounding states of Maryland, New Jersey, and West Virginia combined.
Pennsylvania
New York-breds commanded solid prices at the Ocala Breeders' Sales Co.'s 2-year-olds in training sale on Feb. 12.
Eight of the 10 juveniles offered sold, and they grossed $1,330,000, for an average of $166,250, a figure that exceeded the company's overall record sale average of $157,640. The top-priced New York-bred was a son of Hold That Tiger purchased for $400,000 by Steve Klesaris for Puglisi Racing. At the Feb. 3 under-tack show, he turned in a quarter-mile work in 20.80 seconds, the best of 18 such works at the distance.
It's Sunday morning, Feb. 3, and Tom Ventura, general manager of the Ocala Breeders' Sales Company, is getting ready for the first of two under-tack shows leading to the Feb. 12 OBS sale of 2-year-olds in training. Ventura's overview that morning - before the workouts - was that this was an exceptionally good group of 2-year-olds in terms of conformation and athleticism. The sales horses lived up to their looks that morning as they posted solid works over the newly installed Safetrack synthetic surface. Nine days later they sold for record numbers.
A new dimension has been added to this week's annual Ocala 2-year-old sales and racing festival. The blue motif representing the international Thoroughbred activities of Sheikh Mohammed's Darley enterprises will be prominently on display. Darley is co-sponsoring the five races that comprise the Ocala Breeders' Sales Co.'s festival of racing on Monday. Darley is also hosting a postrace banquet for invited guests - breeders, owners, consignors, and buyers who are in town for the races and sales.