Trainer Michael Stidham has sent Supreme Aura to Oaklawn for the $150,000 Bachelor on April 12. The six-furlong race for 3-year-olds kicks off the annual Racing Festival of the South, when Oaklawn runs seven major stakes over the final week of its meet, which ends April 14. Stidham said Gary Stevens has the mount in the Bachelor.
Supreme Aura will be cutting back to one turn – where he is unbeaten – after running ninth going 1 1/16 miles in the Grade 2 Risen Star Feb. 17 at Fair Grounds.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Engage, the winner of the Grade 3 Futurity at Belmont last October, makes his 2018 debut in Saturday’s Grade 3, $250,000 Bay Shore Stakes for 3-year-olds going seven furlongs.
Trainer Chad Brown shut Engage down following the Futurity, his second win from three starts at 2. Engage, a son of Into Mischief, has had eight workouts at the Palm Meadows training center leading up to his return.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Midnight Disguise will go for her third consecutive stakes victory and her first in a graded event when she heads a field of six entered for Saturday’s Grade 2, $300,000 Gazelle Stakes for 3-year-old fillies.
Midnight Disguise is stretching back out to 1 1/8 miles, the distance at which she might have run her best race when she took the Busanda here on Jan. 25. The big, long-striding filly won the Busher going a one-turn mile here on March 3.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – He has raced only twice but has been brilliant both times. If Army Mule is going to run that way again, his connections want him to do it in an important race.
That is why despite having only two races under his belt, Army Mule will run in Saturday’s Grade 1, $400,000 Carter Handicap at Aqueduct. The Carter, contested at seven furlongs, drew a field of 11 and is one of four undercard stakes on the 11-race Wood Memorial program that starts at 1 p.m. Eastern.
Indexical, who in 2016 ran second to Lord Nelson in the Grade 1 Bing Crosby at Del Mar, will make his first start for owner Danny Caldwell and trainer Federico Villafranco in Friday’s eighth race at Oaklawn. He has not raced since being haltered by his current connections out of a $30,000 claimer last May at Prairie Meadows. Friday’s optional $45,000 claiming sprint is for 4-year-olds and up over six furlongs, and the field of nine also includes Grade 3 winner Guns Loaded and top Iowa-bred One Fine Dream.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Exercise rider Adrian Valenzuela underwent surgery to stabilize his spinal cord on Tuesday after suffering a devastating injury in a spill at Santa Anita on Saturday morning that left him partially paralyzed, according to his father, Martin Valenzuela.
Martin Valenzuela said his son was scheduled to be taken out of intensive care at Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena, Calif., on Wednesday but does not have a favorable long-term prognosis.
Del Mar will increase appearance bonuses for out-of-state shippers who meet certain criteria for the track’s two race meetings this year.
The owner of a horse who made his previous start at other circuits or outside the United States and has not started in California in the preceding 12 months will be paid a $2,000 bonus for the horse’s first start at Del Mar. First-time starters are not eligible.
ARCADIA, Calif. – There are ebbs and flows to the Kentucky Derby and its prep season every year, but for the past few years, it is California-based runners who have had the most success on the first Saturday in May, and they have more than outpunched their weight when it comes to the Derby preps, too.
