Trainer D. Wayne Lukas went on record last week as saying Bravazo went too slow in a half-mile work that was timed in 51.60 seconds.
Monday, Lukas made sure that wouldn’t happen again as he put two horses in front of Bravazo for a five-furlong workout that NYRA clockers timed in 1:00.90 over the Oklahoma training track. Bravazo is preparing for a start in the Grade 1, $1.25 million Travers on Aug. 25.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – As the exercise rider of Royal Delta, Rodolphe Brisset already has been associated with one Alabama winner. As the trainer of Talk Veuve to Me, Brisset hopes to be associated with a second.
On Monday, Brisset, serving as the exercise rider, guided Talk Veuve to Me through a four-furlong workout in 47.95 seconds over the Oklahoma training track in preparation for Saturday’s Grade 1, $600,000 Alabama, the marquee race of the Saratoga season for 3-year-old fillies.
Fair Grounds in New Orleans will open a 10-date meet for Quarter Horses on Thursday. The season will run through Sept. 8.
First post on Thursday is 12:30 p.m. Central.
Fair Grounds has scheduled 10 stakes races for the meet, with half to be run on the closing-day card Sept. 8. The program will be anchored by the Grade 1, $150,000-added Louisiana Quarter Horse Breeders Association Sale Futurity. Other races on the card will include the Grade 2, $40,000 Mid-City Stakes for 3-year-olds and up over a classic distance of 440 yards.
Gunnevera emerged from his Friday comeback race at Gulfstream Park in good order and remains on pace for a start in the Grade 1, $750,000 Woodward Sept. 1 at Saratoga, according to his trainer, Antonio Sano.
The Woodward is part of a plan to get Gunnevera back to the Breeders’ Cup Classic.
Gunnevera on Friday was making his first start since coming out of an eighth-place finish in the Dubai World Cup with an injury to his right front hoof. He rolled by 6 1/2 lengths in the 1 1/16-mile allowance, winning in hand in 1:42.03 and earning a Beyer Speed Figure of 85.
Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs, Ark., will offer maiden special weight purses of as much as $87,000 on three designated programs next year as part of a $32 million purse structure for the 2019 meet that will extend to May.
Oaklawn’s meet opens Jan. 25 and will run 57 dates through May 4.
Maiden special weights are worth $77,000 going into the meet, but will be worth $87,000 on the Southwest, Rebel, and Arkansas Derby cards, said Jennifer Hoyt, a track spokeswoman.
Trainer Jerry Hollendorfer hopes to get a race into Battle of Midway, last year’s Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile winner, before the meet ends Sept. 3, and Battle of Midway moved closer to that Sunday with a six-furlong work in 1:13.80 under Flavien Prat.
“He galloped out well. I’d like to run him here if I could,” Hollendorfer said.
Battle of Midway could be nominated to the $75,000 Harry Brubaker Stakes on Aug. 22, but Hollendorfer would have time to get only one more work into him. The work Sunday was his first six-furlong drill since being put back into training.
DEL MAR, Calif. – Trainer Jerry Hollendorfer has won the Del Mar Futurity and the Del Mar Debutante, but never both in the same year. He has a strong chance to accomplish the feat this year with the colt Instagrand and the filly Brill.
Instagrand is bound for the Futurity on closing day Sept. 3 following his dominating performance on Saturday in the Best Pal Stakes, for which he received a Beyer Speed Figure of 92. He is now 2 for 2.
Minnesota-bred 3-year-old Mr. Jagermeister is looking more and more like a serious racehorse. But trainer Valorie Lund remains serious in her commitment to staying conservative with Mr. Jagermeister this year in the hope of having an even better horse next year.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Trainer Jonathan Thomas wanted to make sure he kept all his options open when it came to working Catholic Boy here Monday. In the end, the Travers hopeful breezed an easy half-mile in 48.47 seconds over a very busy main track shortly after the renovation break, galloping out five furlongs in 1:00.40 before easing up three-quarters in 1:14 with jockey Javier Castellano aboard.
DEL MAR, Calif. – The Pacific Classic field, already abbreviated, might end up even shorter than initially expected as trainer Bob Baffert on Monday said that Roman Rosso was his only certain runner in the Grade 1, $1 million race Saturday at Del Mar.
Baffert worked Mubtaahij on Monday, and though he went five furlongs in 1:00.60, Baffert was far from certain to enter Mubtaahij in the Pacific Classic. Mubtaahij missed the San Diego Handicap earlier this meet after spiking a temperature, and Monday’s drill was only his third since returning to the work tab.
