ARCADIA, Calif. – Hog Creek Hustle fits the underdog role well. After winning the Grade 1 Woody Stephens at Belmont Park at 18-1, the Overanalyze colt missed winning the Grade 1 H. Allen Jerkens at Saratoga by a few inches, this time at 10-1.
ETOBICOKE, Ontario – Cooler Mike captured Woodbine’s final turf stakes of the season with a half-length victory over Silent Poet in the Bunty Lawless on Oct. 20. Trainer Nick Nosowenko said he would like to run Cooler Mike twice more at Woodbine, and is targeting the $100,000 Sir Barton Stakes on Nov. 30 as Cooler Mike’s final start of the meet.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Mongolian Groom, a 25-1 winner of the Awesome Again, isn’t the only horse who earned his way into the Breeders’ Cup Classic with a big upset in a Grade 1 last month.
Math Wizard won the Pennsylvania Derby at 31-1, after which trainer Saffie Joseph Jr. and the owners of the 3-year-old Algorithms colt decided to try to stun the racing world again.
ARCADIA, Calif. – An intriguing showdown between Sistercharlie and Magical will not take place in Saturday’s $2 million Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Turf as Magical was diagnosed with a temperature Monday morning and did not ship to California.
Trainer Aidan O’Brien told The Racing Post that Magical would be retired.
“She has been an unbelievable mare,” O’Brien told the publication. “She was so game, so consistent and so classy.”
ARCADIA, Calif. – You could call him “Pinto Bean” and it would fit, but then nobody would call their top-class racehorse anything like that, so trainer Luis Carvajal Jr. settled on “Little Rocket.”
If he could limbo a little, Imperial Hint, 6, might walk clean underneath the largest Thoroughbreds. Out on the racetrack he just runs them over.
He’s not just small, he’s unusual looking, a bowling ball of a being, short legs poking out of a fullback’s torso so layered with muscle Imperial Hint looks almost as wide as tall.
ARCADIA, Calif. – McKinzie in his final work on Monday for the $6 million Breeders’ Cup Classic on Saturday at Santa Anita was timed by Daily Racing Form’s Mike Welsch in 1:00.94 for five furlongs, after which his trainer, Bob Baffert, let out an audible sigh of relief.
“I can relax now,” Baffert said. “These works are so important. He was really smooth. It went just right. No excuses. He’s as ready as I can get him.”
ARCADIA, Calif. – Street Band’s pedigree predicted a long wait before the light bulb went on. Owner-trainer Larry Jones saw the same thing with Street Band’s dam and five siblings.
“This family, I’ve trained them all, and it takes them a long time to come around,” Jones said. Perhaps it is fate Street Band’s rider Sophie Doyle also is a late bloomer.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Five years was a lifetime ago for Brad Cox. He was still reassembling a racing stable that had been all but disbanded, the result of an eggs-in-one-basket arrangement with an owner who wound up dismissing him through an attorney.
Cox was here at Santa Anita with his first-ever Breeders’ Cup starter, a 4-year-old gelding named Carve. Dismissed at 17-1 in the 2014 BC Dirt Mile, Carve wasn’t much of a factor when finishing sixth under Mike Smith.
ARCADIA, Calif. –The 20-cent Rainbow pick six has a jackpot carryover of $395,207 on Thursday’s nine-race program at Santa Anita, although many deep-pocketed bettors will wait and focus on the bet on Sunday’s closing day of the autumn meeting.
The Breeders’ Cup programs on Friday and Saturday will not have a Rainbow pick six, but will have a $1 million separate pick six.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Thousand Words, purchased for $1 million last September, is likely bound for a stakes after winning his debut in a maiden special weight race at 6 1/2 furlongs on Saturday at Santa Anita.
The win could lead to a start in the Grade 3 Bob Hope Stakes at seven furlongs on Nov. 16 at Del Mar or the Grade 2 Los Alamitos Futurity at 1 1/16 miles on Dec. 7, the next two graded stakes on dirt for 2-year-olds in Southern California.
