HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Trainer Todd Pletcher has won three of the last four runnings of the Florida Derby with Constitution (2014), Materiality (2015), and last year’s Kentucky Derby hero Always Dreaming. If he’s to add to that impressive résumé this spring, it could be with Noble Indy, a son of Take Charge Indy who kept his record perfect after two starts with a game, half-length victory going 1 1/16 miles under allowance conditions here last week.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Expect to see Chocolate Coated in a turf stakes for fillies and mares at Santa Anita in coming days.
Whether Monday’s Grade 3 Megahertz Stakes at a mile or Saturday’s Grade 3 Las Cienegas Stakes at about 6 1/2 furlongs on the hillside turf course is the chosen race will be decided this weekend, trainer Neil French said.
“We have to make a difficult decision,” French said Saturday. “The hill race looks like it’s coming up a little easier than the race on Monday.
“If she runs on Monday, I think she’ll run well.”
The 2018 Emerald Downs stakes schedule looks similar to last year, with a notable scheduling change for the statebred Washington Cup events. The schedule comprises 28 stakes worth a total of $1.45 million during a 67-day meet that opens April 22.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Weather permitting, there will be a nine-race card Monday, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, at Aqueduct, topped by the $100,000 Interborough Stakes for female sprinters, which drew a large, competitive field of 10.
Come Dancing, who has won both of her career starts – albeit 13 months apart – will step into stakes company for the first time for trainer Carlos Martin. Come Dancing won her career debut at Aqueduct on Nov. 6, 2016, by 3 1/2 lengths but was subsequently sidelined by a fractured pastern that required surgery.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – If a Grade 1 winner starts in the Grade 2 Wood Memorial, the purse of the race will be bumped to $1 million from its current level of $750,000, the New York Racing Association announced Friday. All horses who run in the race would run for the winner’s share of $1 million.
The Wood, which offers 170 qualifying points to the May 5 Kentucky Derby, is scheduled for April 7.
The Wood was a Grade 1 from 2002 to 2016 before being downgraded to a Grade 2 for the 2017 running. Its purse had been $1 million from 2011 to 2016.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – The New York Racing Association announced two bonus programs intended to boost field size for the Aqueduct and Belmont Park spring meets.
First, NYRA will offer a 30 percent winnings bonus and provide a $1,500 shipping stipend to the connections of a horse who starts at Aqueduct or Belmont after making its previous start at Oaklawn Park. The bonus is good for the horse’s first start at either Aqueduct’s spring meet, which runs April 6-22, or Belmont’s spring/summer meet, which runs April 27 through July 15.
HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – Ivan Fallunovalot, a two-time winner of the King Cotton at Oaklawn, launches his 8-year-old season Sunday in the eighth race at Oaklawn.
He goes in an optional $62,500 claiming sprint that also drew Grade 2 winner St. Joe Bay from the barn of trainer Peter Miller and Midwest stakes winners Recount, Storm Advisory, Apprehender, Rockshaw, Counterforce, and Wilbo.
The race will be run over six furlongs.
HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – Bob LaPenta won the last Triple Crown race run when Tapwrit, who he owns in partnership, took the Belmont Stakes in June. The cycle for 3-year-old stakes success starts over for the New York native on Monday when one of his promising young horses, Navistar, runs in the $150,000 Smarty Jones at Oaklawn Park.
LaPenta also owns the well-regarded Catholic Boy, who on Friday in Florida had his first work since winning the Grade 2 Remsen, and Montauk, a debut winner at Belmont whom he races in partnership with Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Giant Expectations, upset winner of the Grade 2 San Antonio Stakes on Dec. 26 at Santa Anita, worked five furlongs in 58.80 seconds Friday in preparation for the $16 million Pegasus World Cup on Jan. 27 at Gulfstream Park.
Giant Expectations worked from the half-mile pole to the seven-eighths pole, a furlong past the finish line. Trainer Peter Eurton timed Giant Expectations in 46.80 for the first half-mile of the workout and galloping out six furlongs in 1:13.
