ARCADIA, Calif. – Eye of the River will be a longshot in a $20,000 claiming race for maidens on Thursday at Santa Anita.
Sadly, the filly’s trainer, Martine Bellocq, remains hospitalized in San Diego with second- and third-degree burns over 50 percent of her body sustained in the wildfire that struck the San Luis Rey Downs training center in San Diego County on Dec. 7.
ARCADIA, Calif. – The breakthrough performance by Midnight Bisou in Sunday’s seven-furlong Santa Ynez Stakes – her first win – has trainer Bill Spawr ready to send her a little farther.
“I think she’ll get a mile,” he said, while walking from the winner’s circle to the paddock late Sunday afternoon.
Spawr and his clients Bloom Racing and Allen Racing will not have to wait long to give Midnight Bisou such a test. The one-mile Las Virgenes Stakes, a Grade 2, $200,000 race, is set for Feb. 4, the afternoon of the Super Bowl.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Heart to Heart, a standout turf miler over the last few seasons, will make his 7-year-old debut in the Grade 2 Fort Lauderdale, one of three graded stakes set for Saturday at Gulfstream.
An earner of more than $1.5 million, all for owner Terry Hamilton and trainer Brian Lynch, Heart to Heart figures to be a heavy favorite in the Fort Lauderdale at 1 1/16 miles on turf. With regular jockey Julien Leparoux riding Saturday at Fair Grounds, the mount goes to Irad Ortiz Jr.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Trainer Kevin Attard is able to keep closer tabs on his horses than, say, his first cousins. His father, trainer Tino Attard, was the ninth of 26 children, with four of the boys migrating to Canada while most of their siblings stayed behind in their homeland of Malta.
Nominations are out for a trio of stakes that mark the first big stakes day of 2018 at Tampa. Those Jan. 20 races, labeled as the Skyway Festival, are the $125,000 Pasco for 3-year-olds and the $125,000 Gasparilla for 3-year-old fillies, both at seven furlongs, and the $50,000 Wayward Lass for fillies and mares at 1 1/16 miles.
The first graded races of the year at Tampa will be run Feb. 10 when the Grade 3 Sam F. Davis Stakes, a Kentucky Derby points event, heads a group of four stakes.
Never in 35 years of riding had Jose Ferrer been injured so badly. A September spill left Ferrer with eight fractured ribs and a collapsed lung, but the jockey has healed with a vengeance.
“I feel better than I ever have,” said Ferrer, 53. “Getting hurt like that, it makes you appreciate what you have. Your eyes are open big.”
ARCADIA, Calif. - McKinzie will have one or two races in preparation for the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs on May 5 after winning his 3-year-old debut in Saturday’s Grade 3 Sham Stakes at Santa Anita.
Trainer Bob Baffert said Sunday that McKinzie will be considered for races at Santa Anita and Oaklawn Park in coming months.
NEW ORLEANS – Just watch Gun Runner get a bath.
Most horses stomp, shift about, shake their heads, offer at least some mild form of protest as they are being bathed outside barns after morning exercise.
Gun Runner, getting the business on a chilly Sunday morning at Fair Grounds, barely budged. The chain on the end of the shank by which he is led around goes over his nose but not through his mouth. There is never a question of Gun Runner acting stupid: He is all class.
ARCADIA, Calif. - It Tiz Well, the winner of the Grade 1 Cotillion Stakes last September and two other stakes, may have run her last race.
Owner Tom Stull said Saturday that It Tiz Well has been diagnosed with a bone chip in an ankle and may be retired. He said a mating with Tapit is under discussion this year.
“She has a few issues,” Stull said. “We’ll see if she races again. She might have to be a broodmare. We’ll get a couple more evaluations.”
Sunday’s featured race at Fair Grounds, race 2, is a Louisiana-bred turf allowance race also open to $35,000 claimers with conditions that are open enough to allow the best statebred grass horses to run.
The field includes the one-two finishers from the $100,000 Louisiana Champions Day Turf, Extra Credit and Fort Pulaski, as well as Grande Basin, whose late rally in the $150,000 Champions Day Classic fell a nose short of the victorious Mobile Bay.
