Some 48 hours after escaping serious injury in a Friday spill on the Gulfstream turf, jockey Jairo Rendon was back in the winner’s circle.
Rendon booted home a 3-year-old gelding named Temple in the ninth race Sunday after taking off Saturday to nurse his sore shoulder. He fell in Friday’s sixth race when his mount, Little Christina, broke down in midstretch as an odds-on favorite. The 5-year-old mare had to be euthanized.
The executive director of the Delaware Thoroughbred Racing Commission has denied a stay of a one-year suspension sought by the trainer Marcus Vitali.
John Wayne, the top official of the state’s racing regulatory body, denied the stay immediately after receiving the request last week, he said. Stewards at Delaware Park had issued a one-year suspension to Vitali on Monday, citing allegations that he removed an unidentified substance from a refrigerator in a backstretch dorm room while track security was searching the room.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – By early Monday morning, Shancelot and Imperial Hint were back at Monmouth Park after turning in two of the most impressive performances ever seen in the 156-year history of racing at Saratoga.
On Sunday, Shancelot lit up the main track with a scintillating 12 1/2-length victory over 11 rivals in the Grade 2, $200,000 Amsterdam Stakes for 3-year-olds. In just his third career start, Shancelot stormed the lead under Emisael Jaramillo and ran 6 1/2 furlongs in 1:14.01, just .27 off the stakes and track record set by Quality Road in 2009.
The Sonoma County Fair in Santa Rosa, Calif., is the only track on the fair circuit with a turf course, and when the meet opens on Thursday it will give Northern California trainers their first chance to run horses on grass in nearly two months.
The eight-day meet runs Thursday-Sunday for the next two weeks. Post time on Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays is 1:15 p.m., with post time on Fridays at 2:15.
DEL MAR, Calif. -- Assistant starter Hector Ramirez was hospitalized on Sunday after a scary incident at Del Mar in which Ramirez collapsed right after race 6 and was revived by paramedics and EMTs, a fellow assistant starter, and two members of the track's grounds crew.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Imperial Hint is known as the “little rocket,” but trainer Luis Carvajal Jr. thinks the 6-year-old may have had a growth spurt over the weekend at Saratoga.
“To me he looked a little taller than yesterday,” Carvajal joked Sunday morning. “I don’t know, maybe that’s just my imagination.”
Imperial Hint surely raised his profile in the Sprint division with a track record-setting performance in capturing Saturday’s Grade 1 Alfred G. Vanderbilt Handicap, a race he won for the second consecutive year.
Tommy Burns has accompanied Thunder Snow on his U.S. excursions to Churchill Downs, Belmont Park, and now Saratoga.
When it comes to what surface Burns believes Thunder Snow handles best, he leaves little doubt.
“The best I’ve seen him is on this surface,” Burns said. “For some reason he’s just thriving out here, he’s moving so well.”
Burns was referring to the main track at Saratoga where on Sunday Thunder Snow worked seven furlongs in 1:27.31 in preparation for a start in Saturday’s Grade 1, $1 million Whitney Stakes.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Tax and Tacitus have been running in the same circles since the spring. The two are likely headed for a fifth straight meeting in next month’s Grade 1, $1.25 million Travers Stakes, a race that, depending on who ultimately shows up, figures to have major implications on championship honors in the 3-year-old division.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – The prospect of a rematch between Channel Cat and Ya Primo should be worth the price of admission alone after the connections of the first- and second-place finishers in Saturday’s Grade 2 Bowling Green acknowledged both horses would definitely be pointed for the Grade 1 Sword Dancer here on August 24.
DEL MAR, Calif. – Grecian Fire may have earned a spot in the Grade 2 Del Mar Mile on Aug. 18 with an emphatic victory in Friday’s $151,755 California Dreamin’ Stakes for statebreds.
Ridden by Mike Smith, Grecian Fire overcame severe traffic on the turn to win the California Dreamin’ Stakes by a length, closing from eighth through the stretch.
“It was unbelievable,” trainer Keith Desormeaux said.
The $200,000 Del Mar Mile is run on turf.
“We’ll see how he comes out of it, but it sounds like fun,” Desormeaux said of the Del Mar Mile.
