The Humboldt County Fair in Ferndale, Calif., has revised its post times for the opening week of its meeting.
First post on Thursday’s opening day, Saturday, and Sunday will be 2:15 p.m. Friday’s first post will be 3:15 p.m.
“We moved the post times to coincide with Del Mar,” said Humboldt County Fair manager Richard Conway. “Hopefully, it will help with our exposure and the mutuel handle this opening week.”
First post at Del Mar is 2 p.m. Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday, and 4 p.m. Friday.
The past and the present came together in the Gulfstream winner’s circle on Sunday for trainer Stanley Gold. He sent out Nacho Mama ($22.60) in the day’s fourth race to set a track record for 4 1/2 furlongs in her debut. She won a maiden special weight for 2-year-old fillies in 50.86 seconds, lowering the mark of 51.07 held by another Gold trainee, Awesome Banner, who set the record in his own winning debut on June 5, 2015.
Among the standout breezers on a busy Monday morning at Saratoga were No Dozing and Union Strike, both preparing for Grade 1 stakes assignments on Aug. 25.
No Dozing, who came off a lengthy layoff to win an allowance race here on opening day, went five furlongs in 59.68 over the Oklahoma training track Monday morning in preparation for the Grade 1 Forego.
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.
