ARCADIA, Calif. - Imperial Hint will be scratched from the Breeders’ Cup Sprint, trainer Luis Carvajal Jr. said Saturday morning.
Carvajal said Imperial Hint developed a blister on his coronet band, at the top of his hoof, that was sensitive to the touch when examined by state veterinarians.
“The horse has been training well,” said Carvajal. “When the vets watched him on the track he looked good, but the area is sensitive to the touch.”
ARCADIA, Calif. – Three longshot winners in Friday’s pick six sequence, capped by Storm the Court’s 45-1 upset in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, produced a $489,379 carryover into Saturday’s Breeders’ Cup card at Santa Anita.
No one picked six in a sequence spanning races that included victories by Tap Black at $30 in race 4, Four Wheel Drive at $5, Structor at $12.60, British Idiom at $7.40, Sharing at $29.60, and Storm the Court at $93.80. Five winners paid $2,878.70 on a $1 ticket, the bet’s base amount.
Wagering on the five Breeders’ Cup races held on Friday at Santa Anita Park in Southern California set a record for the Friday slate and was up 9.4 percent over handle on the same five races last year, according to charts of the races.
Total wagering on the five races, including all horizontal bets ending in Breeders’ Cup races held on the 10-race card, was $41.71 million, according to the charts, up from $38.14 million on the five Breeders’ Cup races held last year at Churchill Downs in Louisville.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Top trainer Chad Brown has won the Grade 1 Matriarch Stakes the last two years, and two of the last three runnings of the Grade 1 Hollywood Derby at Del Mar’s fall meeting.
This year, Brown is likely to have another group of runners at Del Mar for those major stakes. The Del Mar autumn meeting begins on Friday.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Joel Rosario, who began Breeders’ Cup weekend ranked fourth in the nation in money earnings, will ride the winter-spring meeting at Santa Anita from Dec. 26 to early April, according to his agent, Ron Anderson.
Rosario, 34, rode the initial months of the 2018-19 Santa Anita winter-spring meeting before he relocated to Keeneland for its spring meeting. Anderson said Rosario is planning a similar schedule this year.
At the time of his departure from Santa Anita, Rosario was the leading rider with 56 wins, four more than Flavien Prat.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Trainer Don Chatlos will have a stable of approximately 12 horses for owner Larry Best at the Del Mar autumn meeting, which begins on Friday.
Chatlos said on Thursday that a group of nine horses will be shipped from New York to California on Sunday, with others to follow soon. Chatlos said he plans to be based in Southern California through the spring before a possible return to New York in May.
“I’m going until the end of April and then we’ll play it by ear and see if we’ll come back here,” Chatlos said Thursday from New York. “We’ll see how it goes.”
ARCADIA, Calif. – Thais, who was entered in Saturday’s $2 million Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Turf at Santa Anita to act as a pacemaker for probable favorite Sistercharlie, was scratched on Thursday based on the recommendation of Dr. Rick Arthur, the equine medical director for the California Horse Racing Board.
“She was placed on the vet’s list as unsound,” Arthur told Daily Racing Form Thursday, declining to get into specifics of the unsound area.
ARCADIA, Calif. – The first sighting of Team Coolmore and the Aidan O’Brien-trained Breeders’ Cup contingent was the highlight of training hours on another unseasonably cold morning Thursday at Santa Anita, where the temperature was in the low to mid-40s throughout much of the five-hour session. One could also smell a hint of smoke from the wildfires burning in the area, which don’t figure to have any impact on the two Breeders’ Cup cards here this weekend.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Santa Anita has been good to trainer Chad Brown over the years. This is the place where he won his first Breeders’ Cup race, back in 2008. He’s now won 12 Breeders’ Cup races, six of them at Santa Anita.
“I like it out here,” he said Thursday morning while watching his horses train in advance of this year’s Breeders’ Cup on a bright, sunny morning.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Led by English Derby winner Anthony Van Dyck, top Irish trainer Aidan O’Brien has another formidable team in three races on Saturday’s Breeders’ Cup program. He could very well add to his totals as one of the event’s leading trainers.
Approaching this year’s Breeders’ Cup, O’Brien had 12 Breeders’ Cup wins, tied with Chad Brown in third place on the all-time list. D. Wayne Lukas led all trainers with 20 wins, followed by Bob Baffert with 15.
