OZONE PARK, N.Y. – After winning three graded stakes on dirt last Saturday at Aqueduct, trainer Todd Pletcher will aim for a pair of listed stakes scheduled for the turf on this Saturday’s nine-race program at Aqueduct.
Pletcher entered three 3-year-olds in the $100,000 Bridgetown at six furlongs. He also entered recent acquisition Not Taken in the $100,000 Plenty of Grace for older fillies and mares scheduled for a mile on the turf.
HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – Magnum Moon and Solomini, the first- and second-place finishers in the $900,000 Rebel Stakes at Oaklawn Park on March 17, drew side by side for their rematch in Saturday’s Grade 1, $1 million Arkansas Derby.
STICKNEY, Ill. – Friday’s eight-race Hawthorne program has some playable fields on the back end of the card and is headlined by race 7, an Illinois-bred two-turn dirt allowance.
While the race is open to older horses, the 3-year-old Colour Guard is likely to be a defined favorite. Trained by Dane Kobiskie, Colour Guard makes his first start in Illinois-bred competition and comes off three solid performances at Oaklawn Park.
STICKNEY, Ill. – Trainer Larry Rivelli is gearing up for his big meet of the year, Arlington, and the promising 3-year-old he trains The Tabulator is gearing up for his first start of the year.
Rivelli winters at Tampa Bay Downs and runs some horses in South Florida between November and April, but he has become the perennial leading trainer at Arlington, and even as that meet has fallen on hard times, it has become the focal point of his year.
LEXINGTON, Ky. – Sailor’s Valentine, winner of the Grade 1 Ashland here last spring, was scratched from the Grade 1 Madison last Saturday to run instead in the fourth race Friday, a $78,000 allowance that happens to be the first one-mile dirt race of the meet.
“We wanted to look at the Madison, but after we got the one-hole, I was glad to have a backup plan,” said Eddie Kenneally, who trains Sailor’s Valentine for Semaphore Racing and Homewrecker Racing.
Lone Sailor had his first breeze since finishing second in the Louisiana Derby when he went a half-mile in 47.80 seconds before dawn Wednesday over a fast Churchill Downs track. James Graham, who has the mount for the Kentucky Derby, was aboard.
“He’s always been a very good work horse,” said Tom Amoss, who trains Lone Sailor for GMB Racing. “He was in hand and showed good extension of stride and all the things you’re looking for in an important work like this.”
LEXINGTON, Ky. – Keith Desormeaux was taken by surprise when informed by phone that My Boy Jack had drawn the outside post in a field of 12 3-year-olds for the Grade 3, $200,000 Lexington Stakes on Saturday at Keeneland.
“The 12-hole?” said Desormeaux, who trains My Boy Jack for Don’t Tell My Wife Stables and Monomoy Stables. “I thought there were only like seven running. It seems like the Derby gods are working against us, huh?”
Except for the college basketball teams at Villanova and Notre Dame, no one has had a better spring than trainer Todd Pletcher, who has shrewdly plotted the placement of his 3-year-olds to knock off three of the biggest final-round Kentucky Derby preps in this country and will seek a fourth on Saturday in the Grade 1 Arkansas Derby with Magnum Moon.
HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – Oaklawn Park will race into May next year in the most significant change to its racing calendar since World War II, the track announced Wednesday. The 2019 meet is scheduled to open two weeks later, on Jan. 25, and run through May 4, the date of next year’s Kentucky Derby.
ARCADIA, Calif. – There will be plenty of racing at Santa Anita during the spring-summer meeting that begins on Friday.
Tim Ritvo, the chief operating officer of The Stronach Group, the track’s parent company, said on Wednesday that the number of races run on a daily basis is likely to increase during the season, which runs through June 24.
Ritvo said the goal is to add one or two races a day compared to the corresponding racing days in 2017.
“We’re looking to expand if we can,” he said. “The balance is what the inventory can take.”
