Santa Anita will conduct a renovation of its main track after training hours on Wednesday, a process that will be completed within a day and result in a two-day break in timed workouts, track consultant Dennis Moore said on Sunday.
The renovation will be completed slightly less than two weeks prior to the start of the winter-spring meeting on Dec. 26 and is likely to result in a slightly quicker surface, Moore said.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Adam Wachtel grew up coming to Aqueduct in the 1980s and 90s when his father Ed owned horses, including Smokin Mel, who won the 1997 Gotham Stakes and finished third in the Wood Memorial.
The younger Wachtel has owned horses himself now for quite a while and on Saturday he enjoyed a terrific afternoon at Aqueduct, winning the Grade 2 Remsen for 2-year-olds with Shotski and the Grade 3 Go for Wand for fillies and mares with Spiced Perfection.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – There was a sense of relief as well as pride in trainer Jason Servis’s voice Sunday morning as he talked about his 3-year-old Maximum Security, who completed what will likely be a championship season with a 3 1/2-length victory in Saturday’s Grade 1, $750,000 Cigar Mile at Aqueduct.
“Crazy year,” Servis said Sunday morning by phone from Palm Meadows. “I’m not looking for another one of those in the next year, or two years, or five years. Killer year for all parties involved.”
CYPRESS, Calif. – Hall of Famer Bob Baffert became the third trainer to win five races on a single program in Southern California at Los Alamitos on Saturday. The occasion may be remembered as much for two of the winners as the milestone itself.
Baffert’s quintet of winners included two graded stakes with 2-year-olds – Thousand Words in the Grade 2 Los Alamitos Futurity and Bast in the Grade 1 Starlet Stakes, the third consecutive year he has swept the track’s pair of leading stakes for juveniles. Baffert won the fourth through eighth races on Saturday’s nine-race program.
Danny Caldwell has won the owner title at Oaklawn Park four of the last six years and he’s looking forward to the start of the Hot Springs, Ark., meet on Jan. 24.
But whether his 36-horse stable can be settled in by that time remains to be seen.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Stan the Man was entered each of the first two times the Fall Highweight was drawn. He was not entered for Sunday as his connections will now look to run him in the $125,000 Queens County Stakes going 1 1/8 miles here on Dec. 21.
Trainer John Terranova believes Stan the Man is more effective going longer. He said he was actually going to use the Fall Highweight as a stepping-stone to the Queens County. Stan the Man hasn’t run since he finished fifth behind Catalina Cruiser in the Grade 2 True North at Belmont on June 7.
Santa Anita will begin its winter-spring meeting on Dec. 26 with purse levels similar to the start of the corresponding meeting last year, but lower than at the end of the meeting.
Last April, the track increased purses $10,000 for all overnight races for the final 10 weeks of the season in an effort to boost field size. The purse increase was a joint venture between the track and the Thoroughbred Owners of California.
The California Horse Racing Board sent a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday, outlining 16 proposed statutory or regulatory changes to improve “animal welfare in racing,” including the elimination of racing or training on sealed racetracks, requiring enhanced medical reports for horses entered to race, and publishing statements on positive tests for prohibited substances a day after confirmation from an independent lab.
The Grade 1 winners Gift Box and McKinzie worked at Santa Anita on Friday in advance of expected wintertime starts.
Gift Box worked five furlongs in 1:00 in preparation for a scheduled start in the Grade 2 San Antonio Stakes at 1 1/16 miles at Santa Anita on Dec. 26. Owned by Pete and Kosta Hronis and trained by John Sadler, Gift Box won the Grade 1 Santa Anita Handicap in April and has not raced since a fourth-place finish in the Grade 2 Stephen Foster Handicap at Churchill Downs in June.
