Phileas Fogg, second to Awesome Aaron in the Grade 3 Pimlico Special on May 16, will be pointed toward the Grade 2, $400,000 Suburban at Saratoga on July 4, trainer Gustavo Rodriguez said Wednesday.
Rodriguez noted that Phileas Fogg won last summer at Saratoga in an optional $62,500 claimer at 1 1/8 miles in his first start off the Rodriguez claim.
Though disappointed Phileas Fogg couldn’t win the Pimlico Special, Rodriguez overall was pleased with the performance.
Trainer Gary Capuano will send out his first juvenile runners of 2025 at Laurel Park in maiden special weights on Friday and Saturday. After an astounding campaign in the local 2-year-old division last year, Capuano is grappling with high expectations and is doing his best to manage them.
“Last year was crazy,” Capuano said. “Everything really fell into place. I told my help and my owners, I said, ‘Don’t expect that to happen again this year.’ That was just one of those years. Every 2-year-old I ran, except for one, won, and a lot of them kept going.”
For the most part, racing life at Ruidoso Downs in New Mexico has returned to normal in advance of Friday’s opening day, a change from the natural disasters last June and July that led to the cancellation of the final six weeks of the meeting.
Trainer Neil Pessin has announced his retirement from training, effective immediately. His retirement was first reported by the Thoroughbred Daily News.
“I’d like to keep training, but financially it’s very tough, and I was down to two maiden turf horses, one maiden-claimer, and it’s just not financially feasible to keep going,” Pessin told TDN, while also indicating that he plans to remain involved in the industry in some capacity. “I didn’t want to quit, but I really have no choice but to do so.”
Kentucky-based trainer Brendan Walsh came home without the hardware from Pimlico’s major 3-year-old stakes, but with a hefty check, as his barn’s consistency through the weekend earned him top placing in the trainer bonus system offered by 1/ST Racing to horsemen in stakes races over Preakness weekend, May 16-17.
Skelly looked like he was back to the best version of himself earlier this month. Hall of Fame might have more of himself still to give. And Magnitude got himself back in the breeze column last week.
All three dirt horses – a sprinter, a router, and a 3-year-old – are based at Churchill with trainer Steve Asmussen, and the first two are aimed at stakes races there.
By Brad Cox’s standards, the last two weeks have been slow, with three winners from 28 runners. On Preakness weekend at Pimlico, Cox won two, including the Black-Eyed Susan with Margie’s Intention, but back on home grounds at Churchill Downs, Cox sent out six and won none during the last racing week.
But as May pushes toward June, expect Cox to heat up in Kentucky and New York. Cox’s barn is absolutely loaded with older dirt-route horses, to the extent that Cox nominated 10 of them to the May 31 Blame Stakes, a prep for the $1 million Stephen Foster on June 28.
Witty, winner of the $125,000 Jim McKay Turf Sprint on Saturday, could soon be back on the hunt for his first graded stakes victory. Still uncertain about his next start, trainer Elizabeth Merryman is considering several races after the 6-year-old gelding’s late-charging 3 1/4-length victory at Pimlico Race Course.
McAfee, runner-up to Hill Road in the Grade 3 Peter Pan at Aqueduct two weeks ago, will make his next start in the Grade 3, $500,000 Ohio Derby at Thistledown on June 21, Jake Ballis, managing partner of the group that owns majority interest in the horse, said Monday.
ARCADIA, Calif. – The undefeated filly Cavalieri, a notable absentee from the nominations for Sunday’s Grade 2 Santa Margarita Stakes at Santa Anita, will not race until the Del Mar summer meeting, according to trainer Bob Baffert.
Cavalieri, who won the Grade 1 Beholder Mile for fillies and mares at Santa Anita on March 8 in her last start, has not had a published workout since mid-April.
“I’m going to wait for Del Mar,” Baffert said on Sunday.
