Trainer Rodolphe Brisset will be a man on the move this week, but his Demoiselle winner, Positive Spirit, will be taking it easy in New York for a few days before shipping to Payson Park in Florida to prepare for her 3-year-old campaign.
Brisset stopped by Belmont Park to check on Positive Spirit before he flew to Del Mar to saddle Mission Impassible in the Grade 1 Matriarch. Brisset will then be at Fair Grounds on Tuesday and Lexington on Wednesday before heading to Payson himself.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. - Maximus Mischief, winner of the Grade 2 Remsen Stakes at Aqueduct Saturday, returned to Parx Racing on Saturday night but will soon leave for South Florida where he will likely have two starts in preparation for a planned start in the Kentucky Derby on May 4.
Maximus Mischief scored a front-running, 2 1/4-length victory in the Remsen to remain undefeated in three starts. It was his first start around two turns and first at 1 1/8 miles.
Trainer Butch Reid said Maximus Mischief was a bit tired but otherwise came out of the race in good order.
DEL MAR, Calif. - The first-time starter Kingly gave trainer Bob Baffert his 20th win with a 2-year-old maiden this year Saturday at Del Mar.
Kingly, a full brother to the stakes winners Mohaymen and New Year’s Day, won a six-furlong race by three-quarters of a length over Stretford End, the 3-5 favorite. Kingly ($10.20) was always near the front, while racing on the inside under jockey Drayden Van Dyke.
“He’s bred to be a good horse,” Baffert said. “He showed me a lot. He showed me more in the afternoon than in the morning, that’s a positive.”
King of Speed, a multiple stakes winner on turf in recent months, is switching surfaces for Saturday’s Grade 1 Los Alamitos Futurity.
Trainer Jeff Bonde said over the weekend that King of Speed will run in the $300,000 Los Alamitos Futurity and will be ridden for the first time by Kent Desormeaux in the 1 1/16-mile race. Desormeaux replaces Gary Stevens, who retired in November because of a neck injury.
Desormeaux takes the mount on a colt who finished 12th in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf on a yielding turf course at Churchill Downs on Nov. 2.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – There is still a month to go, but trainer Chad Brown has already attained single-year bests in wins, purse earnings, and Grade 1 victories as he sets his sights on a potential third straight Eclipse Award as North America’s leading trainer.
DEL MAR, Calif. – Victor Espinoza, the Hall of Fame jockey who has been sidelined since a morning training accident more than four months ago, on Saturday at Del Mar said he was making excellent progress and hoped to return to action by mid-January.
“I’m getting there, almost there,” said Espinoza, who was visiting the track for the first time since the accident on July 22, an indication of how well he is doing.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Dawn the Destroyer ended a five-race losing streak dating to July 2017 with a 4 1/4-length victory in a second-level allowance race at Aqueduct on Thursday.
It was her first start since April and first since undergoing a throat operation known as a tie-back, according to trainer Kiaran McLaughlin. The tie-back helps keep cartilage from interfering with a horse’s airway.
“She came back a different filly,” said McLaughlin, who trains Dawn the Destroyer for Stonestreet Stable. “She filled out, looks fabulous, and was working very, very well.”
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Complexity and Sippican Harbor, Grade 1 winners this year on the New York Racing Association circuit, are both recovering from minor issues that may delay their 3-year-old seasons.
Complexity, winner of the Grade 1 Champagne, came out of his 10th-place finish in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile with sore shins, according to trainer Chad Brown. Complexity is getting some time off at Stonestreet Farm in Ocala, Fla.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – The New York Racing Association will offer 52 stakes worth $7.37 million at Aqueduct in the first third of 2019, according to the schedule it released Friday.
Aside from a few changes to the New York Claiming Championship Day on March 30 and the addition of the $100,000 Bernardini Stakes, the stakes program virtually mirrors that of 2018. The Bernardini, at 1 5/16 miles, will be run March 2.
The last thing any trainer wants to see is his horse being vanned back to the barn after a race. But for Henry Collazo, the free ride Field Trip received following his second-place finish in a conditioned-claiming dash here last Dec. 15 turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
Field Trip raced under a $30,000 claiming tag that day, and there was a slip in the claim box with his name on it. But under a rule invoked at Gulfstream Park just 13 days earlier, the claim was voided as a result of Field Trip being vanned off.
