HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Trainer Michael McCarthy has done such a good job with both City of Light and Axelrod that the two best horses in his barn last year are leaving for richer opportunities.
City of Light makes the final start of his career Saturday at Gulfstream in the Pegasus World Cup before heading off to stud at Lane’s End. He has won three Grade 1 races and gave McCarthy his first Breeders’ Cup victory in the Dirt Mile in his most-recent start.
Trainer Mike Maker’s Fair Grounds string has struggled through an atypically unproductive meet, but a horse in his barn, Fast and Accurate, can win the featured fifth race Saturday.
Fast and Accurate drew the rail and is one of nine entered in a third-level allowance with an $80,000 claiming option carded for about 1 1/16 miles on turf. Zapperini was cross-entered in a Sunday stakes races at Sam Houston.
Mr. Money had to be scratched from the Lecomte Stakes last Saturday after getting sick the day before, but the colt, fourth in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile making his final start at 2, returned to training Tuesday, trainer Bret Calhoun said Wednesday.
“He’s much better,” Calhoun said. “He missed three days of training. His temperature went back to normal quickly.”
Wynn Time gutted out a third win of the Fair Grounds meet when he captured the Duncan Kenner Stakes on Saturday, but the Illinois-bred gelding is not in peak physical condition and will get some time off, trainer Hugh Robertson said.
Wynn Time went from a productive run last season at Fair Grounds to race competitively in Oaklawn Park stakes races, but Robertson said the gelding will miss Oaklawn this year.
“He’s had three hard races in a row,” Robertson said. “I think I’ll give him some time and run him back in two or three months.”
Monomoy Girl on Thursday night was all but certain to be honored at Gulfstream Park with an Eclipse Award as champion 3-year-old filly of 2018. Three hundred miles northwest, at Paul Sharp Stables in Williston, Fla., the filly herself presumably will be none the wiser.
But on Monday or Tuesday, she’ll know something is up when she boards a van and heads west to rejoin trainer Brad Cox’s string at Fair Grounds.
“Bring her back early next week,” Cox said. “That’s the plan.”
Aqueduct’s Thursday card was canceled by New York Racing Association officials due to a forecast for high winds during the afternoon.
Heavy rain is in the forecast with winds around 30 miles per hour and higher gusts this afternoon.
It is the second cancellation this week. Monday’s card was canceled due to extreme cold. The temperature Thursday morning was 51 degrees.
Jockey John McKee first grabbed headlines as a hot-riding apprentice at River Downs in Cincinnati in 2002, topping the standings with 114 winners from 494 mounts and eclipsing an apprentice record set there by the legendary Steve Cauthen.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Vasilika is likely to start in the Grade 2 Buena Vista Stakes on Feb. 23 after winning her fourth graded stakes in her last five starts in Monday’s Grade 3 Megahertz Stakes.
The $200,000 Buena Vista Stakes is run at a mile on turf for fillies and mares.
“That sounds like a logical next step,” trainer Jerry Hollendorfer said.
Vasilika won the Megahertz Stakes by 1 1/2 lengths in her first start since a fourth-place finish in the Grade 1 Matriarch Stakes at Del Mar on Dec. 2, a defeat that ended an eight-race winning streak.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Sometime in the near future, perhaps as early as this weekend, jockey Kent Desormeaux will become the 18th rider to win 6,000 races in North America. Through Monday, Desormeaux’s most recent day of riding, the 48-year-old Desormeaux had 5,998 victories in the United States and Canada.
