LOUISVILLE, Ky. – The former out-of-the-way meet that has grown into something of a phenomenon will begin Saturday with the kind of eye-popping numbers that horsemen and fans have come to expect from Kentucky Downs.
The 10-race opener will conclude with four straight stakes, led by the $750,000 Tourist Mile. The Saturday card is the first of five at the Kentucky Downs meet, with the other dates being Sept. 6, 8, 9, and 13. Churchill Downs will begin an 11-day meet on Sept. 14.
DEL MAR, Calif. – For the fourth time in as many races, Epical will have a different rider when the 3-year-old gelding runs in Sunday’s Grade 2 Del Mar Derby.
Tyler Baze will have the mount, trainer Jim Cassidy said on Wednesday, replacing an injured Victor Espinoza. Baze was aboard Epical for a five-furlong workout on turf in 1:03 on Aug. 23.
“Tyler got off of him and said, ‘The last time I had a horse work like that, I won the Del Mar Derby,” Cassidy said.
Baze won the 2014 Del Mar Derby on Midnight Storm.
DEL MAR, Calif. – The Grade 1 Del Mar Debutante on Saturday is likely to have its smallest field in nearly two decades.
As of Wednesday morning, hours before post positions were to be drawn, the race had five expected starters – Bellafina, Boujie’s Girl, Brill, Mother Mother, and Watch Me Burn. The race has had five starters four times since it was first run in 1951, most recently in 2000 and 2001. There have been seven runners in each of the last two years.
Following a brief illness, Grade 1 Manhattan winner Spring Quality finished third in the Grade 1 Sword Dancer for trainer Graham Motion at Saratoga last Saturday. Glorious Empire and Channel Maker raced one-two throughout the 1 1/2-mile turf race.
The race was Spring Quality’s first since he became dehydrated and had an intestinal impaction after shipping to Chicago, and had to be scratched from the Aug. 11 Arlington Million. Motion is now considering Spring Quality for the Grade 1, $500,000 Joe Hirsch Turf Classic, a 1 1/2-mile race at Belmont Park on Sept. 29.
Trainer Chuck Lawrence had won big races at Saratoga prior to Glorious Empire’s victory last Saturday in the Grade 1 Sword Dancer – just not in a long time, and never while watching from the grandstand.
Between 1982 and 1994, Lawrence won 136 races as a steeplechase jockey, including the New York Turf Writers Cup at Saratoga aboard Warm Spell in 1993 and on Chief of the Clan in 1987. He also rode Warm Spell to victory in the 1994 Breeders’ Cup Grand National at Far Hills, the year the horse was voted an Eclipse Award.
Trainer Larry Jones said Tuesday he plans to have a division of horses at Oaklawn Park for the first time in eight years when the Hot Springs, Ark., track opens Jan. 25.
Jones will continue to have a winter base at Fair Grounds in New Orleans. He said Oaklawn became an option because one of his clients, Rick Porter of Fox Hill Farm, expressed a desire to race there. Also, Oaklawn is good fit because Jones has mostly dirt horses, and Oaklawn doesn’t have a turf course.
Lone Sailor and High North, who figure to start as the top two choices in the Grade 3, $300,000 Super Derby on Sunday at Louisiana Downs, are both due to arrive at the Bossier City, La., track on Friday, according to their respective trainers, Tom Amoss and Brad Cox. Both horses are based at Churchill Downs.
Cox’s other stakes starters Sunday – Big Changes in the $60,000 Unbridled and Hachi in the $60,000 River Cities – also will arrive Friday. Cox won last year’s Super Derby with Mr. Misunderstood.
Fair Grounds in New Orleans will open and close its upcoming Thoroughbred meet earlier than originally scheduled after an amended dates request was approved by the Louisiana Racing Commission on Monday, according to the agency’s executive director, Charles Gardiner. The track will launch its 80-date season Nov. 15 and close March 24, 2019. The prior schedule had been 81 dates from Nov. 17-March 31.
Monica McGoey, who recently opened a public stable, on Sunday had her first winner from just her second starter, when Nile Princess won a restricted $10,000 claiming race at Gulfstream by 11 lengths.
“It felt awesome,” said McGoey, who owns a Fort Lauderdale bail-bond business. “I’ve had horses win before, but not in my own name.”
The internal investigation conducted by Gulfstream Park into jockey Tony Maragh’s ride in an Aug. 19 race did not turn up any suspicious wagering activity, according to a source with knowledge of the investigation who is not authorized to speak about it.
