Most horsemen welcomed the additional week of racing at Saratoga, announced by the New York Racing Association on Thursday, believing the shorter five-day race week trumps the potential added expense associated with a longer meet.
NYRA announced that this summer’s Saratoga meet will consist of 40 days spread out over eight weeks, compared to the same number of days run over seven weeks, as has been the case since 2010.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – It’s official. This summer’s Saratoga meet will be expanded by one week, with 40 days of racing spread out over eight weeks instead of seven.
Opening day will be Thursday, July 11, with closing day remaining Labor Day, Sept. 2. The first week will consist of four days of racing. The next six weeks will be five days of racing with Mondays and Tuesdays dark. The meet will end with a six-day race week.
The Saratoga meet was first extended to 40 days in 2010, a schedule that consisted of one four-day race week and six six-day race weeks.
Hidden Scroll, a runaway winner of his debut on Jan. 26 at Gulfstream Park, and Code of Honor, runner-up in last year’s Champagne Stakes, are among the 3-year-olds pointing for the Grade 2, $350,000 Fountain of Youth Stakes on March 2 at Gulfstream, their trainers said Thursday.
Hidden Scroll dazzled on the Pegasus undercard, earning a Beyer Speed Figure of 104. On Thursday trainer Bill Mott said “we’re taking a serious look at the Fountain of Youth” with the son of Hard Spun.
Owendale on Feb. 2 had his first work since winning a first-level allowance race Jan. 17 at Fair Grounds – and his connections liked what they saw.
“He really breezed fantastic,” said Brad Cox, who trains Owendale for Rupp Racing.
Owendale makes his stakes debut Feb. 16 in the Risen Star, where he’ll face Lecomte Stakes winner War of Will, several other Fair Grounds-based horses, and – according to Fair Grounds racing officials – perhaps only one out-of-town shipper, a maiden from trainer Bill Mott, either Tacitus or Country House.
Jack Sisterson took his first job as a head trainer late last spring when Brad Kelley’s Calumet Farm hired him to run horses out of a barn at the farm, just down the road from Keeneland. This past fall, Sisterson took nine stalls for the Fair Grounds meet for two purposes: to run some turf horses in New Orleans, and to campaign Calumet’s filly Oxy Lady early in her 3-year-old season.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Stonesintheroad, a dominant winner of a first-level allowance race for New York-bred 3-year-old fillies at Aqueduct on Sunday, could make her next start in the $100,000 Franklin Square Stakes on Feb. 23, trainer Jeremiah Englehart said.
Stonesintheroad, a daughter of Bustin Stones owned and bred by Team Penney Racing, ran off to a 6 1/4-length victory in a six-furlong race on Sunday, running the distance in 1:11.04 and earning a 75 Beyer Speed Figure. She had won her debut by four lengths on Dec. 23 with a 74 Beyer.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Sassy Agnes and Blindwillie McTell have combined to win five stakes races for trainer Linda Rice. But one is no longer in her barn and the other is sidelined until spring.
Rice said Sassy Agnes was sold at Monday’s Fasig-Tipton winter mixed sale in Lexington, Ky., after developing a physical problem that required surgery. She will likely become a broodmare, Rice said.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Trainer Guadalupe Preciado hopes jockey Luis Rodriguez Castro will have an angel on his shoulder when he rides Jump for Alex in Saturday’s $150,000 Jimmy Winkfield Stakes at Aqueduct.
Edward H. Stone, the owner-breeder of Jump for Alex, died on Jan. 29 at the age of 100. Ten days earlier, Jump for Alex had won a first-level allowance race at Parx.
“The next day I talked to him, he told me how beautiful the race was,” Preciado said. “He was talking perfect. Then one night he went to sleep and he never woke up.”
Somelikeithotbrown, the favorite for the $75,000 John Battaglia Memorial at Turfway Park on Friday night, is not the only 3-year-old grass runner trainer Mike Maker will test on a different surface this month. Maker intends to shift two-time turf-stakes winner Henley’s Joy to dirt for owner Bloom Racing in the Feb. 16 Risen Star at Fair Grounds.
After retiring from race-calling in March 2016, Mike Battaglia returned several times to call races from the Turfway Park booth, where he was the announcer for 43 years. Both visits came for the John Battaglia Memorial, a race named in honor of his late father, the general manager at the track in the 1970s, when Turfway was known as Latonia.
