Trainer Joey Foster has built up a stable to be reckoned with in Louisiana and on Friday night will saddle starters in two of the three allowances carded at Delta Downs.
Foster, 57, won his fourth Louisiana Downs training title at the end of September. He’s since set up divisions of his stable at Delta and Fair Grounds, which opens Nov. 28.
“He’s a really underrated horseman,” said Morris Nicks, the retired trainer who has longstanding ties to Foster. “He can train with anybody.”
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – The $150,000 Artie Schiller Stakes is figuratively and literally a long way from the Breeders’ Cup Mile. But it could end up being an ideal backup plan for Caribou Club, who on Wednesday was one of 10 horse entered in Saturday’s Artie Schiller going one mile at Aqueduct.
All drug tests performed on horses in this year's Breeders' Cup have been cleared, the California Horse Racing Board announced.
According to a press release issued late Tuesday night, all horses who competed in the Breeders' Cup races last Friday and Saturday at Santa Anita were given pre-race tests for TCO2, which is used to flag horses who may have been milkshaked. Post-race tests -- using blood and urine -- for prohibited drugs were conducted on the first four finishers in every Breeders' Cup race, as well as additional random horses selected by stewards, the release said.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Back-to-back allowances with purses approaching six figures will serve as highlights of a 10-race Friday card at Churchill – assuming racing will be conducted amid unseasonable cold.
Overnight temperatures in the low 20s were expected to greet horsemen Friday morning, with a daytime high reaching only about 40. The last time Churchill canceled because of a frozen track was at the 2014 fall meet, when two straight days were missed.
If conditions are suitable for racing by the scheduled first post of 1 p.m. Eastern, the co-features should be entertaining.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Covfefe is being turned out for the balance of the year and will return to training in early 2020 with a repeat in the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint at Keeneland being the primary goal, trainer Brad Cox said Wednesday at Churchill Downs.
Covfefe will get “maybe a couple of months” at the McKathan Brothers training center in Ocala, Fla., said Cox. The 3-year-old Into Mischief filly won the BC Filly and Mare Sprint at Santa Anita last Saturday, clinching a divisional Eclipse Award.
The first week of the Del Mar autumn meeting, which begins its four-week run Friday, is the only one without a graded stakes. The richest race this week is Sunday’s $100,000 Desi Arnaz Stakes for 2-year-old fillies at 6 1/2 furlongs.
The race drew 16 nominees, including Leucothea, the easy winner of the Anoakia Stakes at six furlongs on Oct. 13 at Santa Anita, and Powerfulattraction, who was second in the Grade 2 Sorrento Stakes at Del Mar in August and seventh in the Grade 1 Del Mar Debutante on Aug. 31 in her most recent start.
Ronald R went from winning a $40,000 claimer in May 2018 to a victory in the restricted Lure Stakes at Santa Anita last Thursday. Now trainer Ron Ellis is considering giving Ronald R his graded stakes debut in the Grade 2 Seabiscuit Handicap on Nov. 30 at Del Mar.
Jockeys Flavien Prat and Abel Cedillo finished in a tie for the riding title at the Santa Anita autumn meeting, which ended Sunday, with 21 wins.
They will both ride at the Del Mar autumn meeting, which begins Friday, although Prat will have a two-day advantage. Cedillo is not riding on Friday and Saturday while completing a three-day suspension for a recent riding infraction.
Cedillo, 30, said last weekend that he planned to spend a few days this week visiting family in Northern California.
Jose Valdivia Jr., a top rider in Southern California in the 2000s, has returned to this circuit after years of riding in the Midwest. Valdivia, who has two mounts on Friday’s eight-race program at Del Mar, is relaunching his California career at a venue he knows well.
Valdivia won 11 stakes at Del Mar from 2003 to 2012 and will ride there for the first time since the Breeders’ Cup in 2017.
“The thing about it is a change of scenery is good and you appreciate what you left behind,” he said.
ETOBICOKE, Ontario – Due to the inclement weather in the forecast, Woodbine has announced that turf racing has been scrapped for this week, and probably for the rest of the meet.
The remaining races in the current condition book will be offered at the alternate distance listed for the main track. There are no turf races scheduled in the next condition book, which goes from Nov. 13 to Dec. 1. The meet concludes Dec. 15.
“At this time, there is no turf racing planned for the rest of the season,” Woodbine racing secretary Scott Lane said.
