Del Mar is adding an early pick four and a late pick five to the betting menu for the summer meeting, which begins on July 18.
A 50-cent early pick four will start on the second race. The 50-cent late pick five will encompass the final five races. There will be a late pick four on the final four races and a 50-cent pick five on the first five races.
Santa Anita had similar bets at its meeting earlier this year.
The Mid-Atlantic Thoroughbred Championships is nearing its midpoint, and Pimlico-based trainer Mary Eppler is off to a quick start with Page McKenney and Oak Bluffs.
“I’m a big fan of the MATCH series,” Eppler said. “I like the concept. The bonus money is good. And my horses fit these races. I like everything about it.”
The Herringswell Stables of trainer Graham Motion announced on social media Tuesday that Messi has been retired “happy and sound” following his seventh-place effort in a high-level optional-claiming race at Belmont Park on Sunday.
Messi, 8, won two of 12 starts, all in Germany, between 2012 and 2014 and was sent to Motion in 2015 for his 5-year-old campaign. The long-winded turf runner won three of his first four U.S. starts, including the Grade 3 Knickerbocker at Aqueduct.
In 2016, Messi won the Grade 2 Sky Classic at 1 1/4 miles over the Woodbine turf.
ETOBICOKE, Ontario – Among a 16-horse field of Canadian-bred 3-year-olds, Telekinesis has been pegged as the 5-2 favorite for Saturday’s $1 million Queen’s Plate by Woodbine oddsmaker Ernie Perri.
Telekinesis, the Queen’s Plate winter-book favorite, will start from post 10 under Patrick Husbands, who guided him to a front-running victory in the June 9 Plate Trial Stakes.
“He’s going to have speed from out there,” trainer Mark Casse said. “He’ll be the most forwardly placed of my runners. It looks like the speed is inside.”
Imperative was bred in Kentucky, has spent much of his career in California, and made a living commuting to West Virginia for the Charles Town Classic. On Saturday, he will make his first start in 14 months in the Grade 3 Iselin at Monmouth Park.
Now 8, Imperative was purchased by the Loooch Racing Stables of Ron Paolucci and Imaginary Stables in January 2017. In his three starts since, he won the $400,000 Poseidon on the Pegasus World Cup undercard, ran last in the Santa Anita Handicap, and won the Grade 2, $1.25 million Charles Town Classic for the second time.
The New York Racing Association on Wednesday announced a fall 2018 stakes schedule for Belmont Park encompassing 44 races worth more than $10 million.
Eighteen of the races are graded and seven races are part of the Breeders’ Cup Challenge Win and You’re In program, through which race winners gain a fees-paid entry plus travel expenses to designated Breeders’ Cup races. Churchill Downs hosts the Breeders’ Cup on Nov. 2-3, the first time since 2015 the event has been held outside California, and New York races could play a more prominent role this year.
The last race of the day was over, the race meeting had ended, and the beer cans were emerging rapidly from an ice chest on Sunday.
Light beers, of course. This was the jockeys’ room at Santa Anita, after all.
Geovanni Franco cracked a Coors Light, looked across the room and saw colleague Flavien Prat walking toward the door, riding title at the spring-summer meeting secured.
“Good luck in New York,” Franco said in earnest.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – A first stakes starter for a rookie trainer might be cause for a case of nerves. But for Norm Casse, that event is hardly daunting.
In recent years, Casse had daily oversight of such major stars as Tepin, World Approval, and Classic Empire as the top assistant to his father, trainer Mark Casse. So when he sends out Tales of Chaucer in the stakes debut for both the colt and trainer – either Saturday in the Grade 3 Bashford Manor at Churchill Downs or in the restricted Rockville Centre on July 14 at Belmont Park – Casse won’t be shaking in his boots.
Untrapped, most recently a dead-heat runner-up in the May 18 Pimlico Special, had to be euthanized Tuesday from complications of laminitis that followed a bout of colic.
Based for much of his career at Churchill with trainer Steve Asmussen, Untrapped won the Grade 3 Oklahoma Derby at Remington Park last fall and was stakes-placed nine times en route to earning $857,005 from 16 starts, all for owner Mike Langford. The Trappe Shot colt was 12th in the 2017 Kentucky Derby.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – With live action on the Kentucky circuit shifting Sunday to Ellis Park in western Kentucky, there will be a major focus on 2-year-old racing throughout the summer.
Purses for 2-year-old maiden-specials will be a track-record $42,000, which includes bonuses for registered Kentucky-breds. Most starters are Kentucky-breds. A recent canvassing of historical trends by track publicist Jennie Rees found that 107 horses who raced at Ellis at 2 in the last 20 years (since 1998) have gone on to win a graded race, including 18 in a Grade 1.
