LEXINGTON, Ky. – Tom McCarthy is gone but not forgotten. The late owner and trainer of General Quarters, the storybook winner of the 2009 Blue Grass Stakes at Keeneland, is being remembered through a 2-year-old colt named Tom’s Last General, who runs here Friday in the third race.
LEXINGTON, Ky. – Amy’s Challenge has the speed to extricate herself from post 1 in the Raven Run Stakes. But then what?
“I know she’s running against some fast horses,” said Mac Robertson, who will send out the speedy Amy’s Challenge in the 20th running of the Grade 2, $250,000 Raven Run on Saturday at Keeneland. “But we’re pretty fast, too, and I really like the way she’s been training here. We ought to be good to go.”
Six months ago, trainer Norm Casse had launched his stable and was on the verge of his first win. On Nov. 2, Casse hopes to have his first starter in a Breeders’ Cup race with Belle Laura in the Juvenile Fillies Turf at Churchill Downs.
That would be a heck of an occasion for a first graded stakes win.
Same time, next year.
That could be the theme for as many as five runners in this year’s $6 million Breeders’ Cup Classic at Churchill Downs, which is looking as though it very well could have a maximum field of 14 when it is run Nov. 3.
Trainer Scott Gelner will attack the first two stakes races of the Delta Downs meet on Friday night with a pair of leading contenders in Taylor’s Spirit and Yes Gorgeous.
Taylor’s Spirit, a multiple stakes winner, could go favored in the $50,000 My Trusty Cat for 2-year-old fillies. The seven-furlong race will be run around two turns. Others set to start in the seven-horse field include the stakes-placed runners Cover Charge, Navy Regatta, and Flatoutandfoxy.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – In a Breeders’ Cup at Churchill Downs that is shaping up light on grass runners from California, as well as among 3-year-olds, Paved could represent an exception on both fronts in the Nov. 3 BC Filly and Mare Turf.
Last year, the Oklahoma Derby produced the winner of the Grade 1, $1 million Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile.
This year, it could happen again.
Lone Sailor, who captured the Grade 3, $400,000 Oklahoma Derby in a three-way photo Sept. 30, is being considered for the Dirt Mile, trainer Tom Amoss said Monday. The interest in the race comes a year after Battle of Midway parlayed a runner-up finish at Remington Park into Breeders’ Cup paydirt at Del Mar.
Tuesday’s announcement that Enable, winner of the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe on Oct. 7 in Paris, will start in the Breeders’ Cup Turf on Nov. 3 at Churchill Downs, gives the $4 million race a confirmed odds-on favorite.
As of Wednesday, Enable was as short as 4-7 in future-book betting with British and Irish bookmakers to win the BC Turf at 1 1/2 miles.
Judging from history, the brilliant filly may be worth opposing.
Trainer Ben Colebrook will be the first to admit Imperial Hint is the horse to beat, and by “a pretty wide margin,” in the Breeders’ Cup Sprint. But there are five reasons why Colebrook will have plenty of confidence when he sends Limousine Liberal out against the favorite Nov. 3 – the five straight stakes, three of them graded, his horse has won at Churchill Downs, the site of the 2018 Breeders’ Cup.
Kentucky Oaks winner Monomoy Girl, a four-time Grade 1 winner who would lock up a divisional championship with a victory in the Breeders’ Cup Distaff, is training toward that challenge at her home base of Churchill Downs. But she isn’t the only 3-year-old filly from a talented crop based at the Breeders’ Cup host track.
Familiar foes Midnight Bisou and Wonder Gadot have both impressed on the work tab beneath the twin spires recently. If all three meet in the Distaff, it would be the third time this season.
