There were two distinctively different previews last week for the Barretts May sale of 2-year-olds in training, which will be held Monday and Tuesday.
The conventional preview was held on Thursday and Friday at Fairplex Park on the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds, featuring sale prospects breezing a furlong or a quarter-mile.
Across town at Hollywood Park, another preview of sorts was held on Wednesday and Thursday, when a few of the prospects ran in maiden races over 4 1/2 furlongs.
Owner Daniel Borislow said Thursday that he is close to a deal that would send his Grade 1 winner Toccet to Lane's End Farm at the end of his racing career.
Toccet is turned out at a farm near Lexington, Ky., for what Borislow said would be about 45 days of rest. A 3-year-old Awesome Again colt, Toccet was pulled off the Triple Crown trail because of what Borislow then termed bone remodeling, the bone-growth process that young horses go through in response to the stresses of training and racing. Borislow said Toccet will return to training this year and will race for him.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - So, how does a sprinter sire the winner of the Kentucky Derby? If you believe some of the commentary about the bloodlines of the horses in the Derby, a gelding like Funny Cide had no chance whatsoever because he descends from the Mr. Prospector line through champion 2-year-old Forty Niner, and his sire was best at less than a mile.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - When Funny Cide won the Kentucky Derby on May 3, Marylander Kennard Warfield Jr. got an especially big charge out of it. Warfield hadn't bet a dime on the Derby winner, but he owns the sole sister to Funny Cide, and that means he has a newly valuable property.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - A fire Tuesday evening in Ocala, Fla., killed five stallions, including Grade 1 winner Traitor and popular Florida sire Darn That Alarm. The fire, the cause of which hadn't been determined by Wednesday afternoon, occurred in the stallion barn at David and Barbara LaCroix's Meadowbrook of Ocala Jockey Club farm in Ocala.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - With the Triple Crown campaign now under way, there's no better time to honor racing's classic heroes. Two of those horses, 1978 Triple Crown winner Affirmed and 1974 Preakness and Belmont winner Little Current, got important posthumous tributes on Kentucky farms this week.
Les Pereira strongly believes in racing his horses in the right spots and two of his homebreds, including one that he still owns, may find the right spot in the June 22 Queen's Plate.
Pereira's Solihull, a recent maiden winner, and stakes winner Arco's Gold, are on track to start in the most prestigious race for Canadian-bred 3-year-olds.
"I said I'd never go to the Plate unless I had a really good horse," said Pereira, who was born in British Guyana and races and breeds under the Beclawat Farm name. "Last year was the first year I ran one (Adjalah)."
Tom Mina, an owner and breeder of New York-breds for many years, became more involved in the business when he bought a New York farm in February 2002.
Mina purchased 15 acres of land in Saratoga Springs and brought the mares he owned to the farm, which features an 18-stall barn and several paddocks. The property, which Mina named Five Oaks Farm for the five oak trees on the land, is located about a mile from downtown Saratoga and formerly housed polo horses.
Call it a good eye, the result of years of studying, or plain old good fortune, but Maryland horsepeople plucked a number of broodmares out of sales in recent years for a fraction of what those mares or their offspring are worth today.
Two of this year's Kentucky Derby contenders - Atswhatimtalknbout and Funny Cide - are older half-brothers to Maryland-bred youngsters.
Lucinda K's second foal, Atswhatimtalknbout, had just turned 2 when the then 8-year-old mare walked into the Fasig-Tipton Kentucky sales ring in February 2002, in foal to Belong to Me.