ARCADIA, Calif. – The graded stakes-winning filly Spectator returned to the races with a game victory in an allowance race Sunday at Santa Anita and has several options for moving back into stakes company, trainer Phil D’Amato said after the race.
ARCADIA, Calif. – The graded stakes-winning filly Spectator returned to the races with a game victory in an allowance race Sunday at Santa Anita and has several options for moving back into stakes company, trainer Phil D’Amato said after the race.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Trainer Kiaran McLaughlin has confirmed what already had been suspected, that Grade 3 Withers winner Avery Island is now officially off the Derby trail after returning lame from a routine workout at Palm Meadows last Friday.
McLaughlin sent Avery Island to Rood and Riddle Clinic in Kentucky for further evaluation earlier this week.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Last year’s Eclipse Award-winning juvenile filly Caledonia Road continues to progress toward her 3-year-old debut, but trainer Ralph Nicks said he still has no definite plans regarding when or where that might be. Caledonia Road, who has not raced since her convincing victory in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies at Del Mar on Nov. 4, has had four works at Palm Meadows since returning to training earlier this winter. She fired a bullet half-mile in 48.35 seconds, the best of 35 at the distance, at the training center last Thursday.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – With only 11 3-year-olds nominated to Saturday’s $100,000 Hutcheson, the racing office will have its work cut out just getting the race to fill. It can, however, count on at least two names being in the box when entries are taken for the Grade 3 dash on Wednesday: Soutache, for trainer Ralph Nicks, and Impact Player, for Todd Pletcher.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Ivy Bell has no bigger fan than her former owner Brook Smith. Over the winter, Smith sold Ivy Bell for an undisclosed price to the partnership of Mathis Stable and Madaket Stables after the daughter of Archarcharch had established herself as an up-and-coming sprinter in Kentucky.
Making her first start Saturday since being turned over to Todd Pletcher, Ivy Bell won the Grade 2 Inside Information at Gulfstream, earning a career-high 90 Beyer Speed Figure and stamping herself as a hot prospect in the national filly-mare sprint division.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Elate, a 2017 Eclipse Award finalist for top 3-year-old filly, is ready to resume serious training at Payson Park under Hall of Fame trainer Bill Mott after a minor setback.
“She popped a splint,” said Walker Hancock, whose family’s Claiborne Farm bred and owns Elate with Adele Dilschneider. “It’s very minor. She’s about to start back again. It was just a little hold-up.”
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – World of Trouble finished a good third as the favorite in the March 10 Tampa Bay Derby, but that’s not enough to keep the speedy colt on the Kentucky Derby trail.
“We’re going to shorten him up, I think,” said Jason Servis, who trains World of Trouble for Michael Dubb and Bethlehem Stables. “My gut feeling is he’ll get 1 1/16 miles, maybe even farther, but not at this stage of his life.”
A fierce battle atop the trainer standings has unfolded at the 2017-18 meet, with Kathleen O’Connell maintaining a 32-30 lead over Gerald Bennett, the perennial local kingpin who has steadily chipped away at the margin in recent weeks. Into Wednesday, Bennett had sent out 163 starters to O’Connell’s 136.
Among jockeys, Antonio Gallardo continues to lead Daniel Centeno by a 77-67 margin, with Samy Camacho emerging as a clear-cut third with 50 wins.
Trainer Forrest Kaelin and his wife, Betty, have wintered off and on in Tampa since 1956, when the track was known as Sunshine Park and Forrest was still a jockey. The couple enjoyed quite a sentimental victory here Sunday when My Monkey captured the fifth race, for maiden claimers, at an $18 mutuel.
My Monkey, a dark bay 3-year-old filly, is named in honor of the couple’s late granddaughter Ashley King, who died at age 32 in a car crash in Louisiana six years ago. Another granddaughter, Brittany King, bred the filly.