After four dark days, racing on this circuit moves to Aqueduct for the next six months beginning with a nine-race card on Friday that begins at 12:15 p.m. Eastern.
Friday’s card will include the Grade 3, $150,000 Tempted Stakes for 2-year-old fillies. Originally a field of 10 was entered, but Seek and Destroy and Hollywood Glory ran 1-2 in Sunday’s off-the-turf Chelsey Flower Stakes and are not expected to run back.
Bad weather meant bad business for the New York Racing Association during the Belmont Park fall meet.
Plagued by rain that forced 64 scheduled turf races to be moved to the main track, all-sources handle at Belmont was $269,002,237, down 11 percent from last fall’s figure of $303,405,927. Last fall, only five races were moved off the turf. There were only 117 turf races run this year compared with 181 last year.
When the Breeders’ Cup landed at Churchill Downs in 1988, the event was a mere stripling of 4. But even at that stage, the championship series had delivered on its promise of crowning champions and showcasing the elite of the breed by age, surface, and distance.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Abel Tasman and Monomoy Girl have already provided their connections with one-in-a-lifetime moments at Churchill Downs by winning the Kentucky Oaks. On Saturday, they’ll try to make those memories twice in a lifetime.
The fillies, who have shared the same race program twice this year, will share the same starting gate in the $2 million Breeders’ Cup Distaff in a rare meeting of Kentucky Oaks winners.
“I am so proud of her,” trainer Bob Baffert has said of Abel Tasman. “She’s one of my favorite all-time horses.”
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – It began when two-time Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe winner Enable stepped onto the Churchill Downs racing surface alongside her stablemate Roaring Lion, winner of four straight Group 1 races, at about 7:40 Monday morning and ended about two hours later when 2017 Breeders’ Cup Turf-winner Talismanic, walking with fellow Breeders’ Cup Turf entrant Waldgeist, left the track through the same gap.
Sol Kumin was part-owner of a Breeders’ Cup winner in 2014 and 2015 and thought owning Thoroughbreds was an easy game.
“I thought, ‘We can do this every year,’ he said.
Not quite.
Kumin did not win a Breeders’ Cup race in 2016 or 2017. In 2016, Kumin’s two previous Breeders’ Cup winners, Lady Eli and Wavell Avenue, finished second in the Filly and Mare Turf and Filly and Mare Sprint, respectively. Last year, Kumin finished second in the Turf with Beach Patrol, while Lady Eli got stepped on during the running of the Filly and Mare Turf and finished eighth.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – This is the place Bob Baffert wants to be on the first Saturday in May – at Churchill Downs, in the winner’s circle. He’s gotten pretty good at it, having won the Kentucky Derby five times, twice with horses who went on to win the Triple Crown. The bloom is not off his roses.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – It was 2013 and Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, ruler of Dubai, would-be ruler of the racing world, had arranged a meeting with Charlie Appleby. Appleby, when he was employed by the English trainer David Loder, got involved with Sheikh Mohammed’s racing operation in 1998 and had worked inside it since, rising to become a head lad, then an assistant trainer, and now Sheikh Mohammed was opening the doors to a dream job – head trainer for Godolphin, one of the most ambitious and successful racing operations ever.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Besides the 14 Breeders’ Cup races set for Friday and Saturday at Churchill Downs, four other stakes (two each day) will be run on the respective undercards.
The Friday races are the Grade 2, $200,000 Marathon Stakes, for 3-year-olds and up at the unusual distance of 1 3/4 miles, and the $100,000 Street Sense, for 2-year-olds at a one-turn mile.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – More than 14 months after winning the Grade 2 Saratoga Special, Copper Bullet finally will return to the races Wednesday as the likely favorite in the Churchill feature, an $82,000 second-level allowance at six furlongs.
“We’re excited about having him back,” trainer Steve Asmussen said. “He’s training nice and we think he’s a good horse.”
Copper Bullet was sidelined by a recurring shin problem, Asmussen said. The colt was so impressive in his four races last year that his name was often cited in early discussions toward the 2018 Kentucky Derby.
