DEL MAR, Calif. – Shivermetimbers, who won a highly rated maiden race for 2-year-olds going one mile Thursday at Del Mar, won’t be wheeled back in the Grade 1 CashCall Futurity at Los Alamitos in 16 days, but hopes are high for him, trainer Jerry Hollendorfer said Friday.
“I was very happy with the way he handled himself,” Hollendorfer said of Shivermetimbers, who earned a Beyer Speed Figure of 89 when defeating Peace by a head in 1:36.94 on the fast main track.
Los Alamitos on Thursday will launch its three-week winter meeting, a 12-day season that will include three graded stakes.
The meeting, which runs through Dec. 17 on a Thursday-through-Sunday basis, is led by two Grade 1, $300,000 races for 2-year-olds at 1 1/16 miles on Dec. 9 – the CashCall Los Alamitos Futurity and the Starlet Stakes for fillies.
DEL MAR, Calif. – Bolt d’Oro, one of the nation’s leading 2-year-old males, is tentatively scheduled to have a three-race campaign at the Santa Anita winter-spring meeting.
Owner and trainer Mick Ruis said Thursday that Bolt d’Oro is likely to have his first start of 2018 in the Grade 2 San Vicente Stakes at seven furlongs in early February. The Grade 2 San Felipe Stakes at 1 1/16 miles March 10 and the Grade 1 Santa Anita Derby at 1 1/8 miles April 7 are other race goals, Ruis said.
“I’m going in all three races,” Ruis said.
MIAMI – Anybody wondering whether trainer Jorge Navarro would be returning to south Florida at full strength for the upcoming Championship meeting at Gulfstream Park had only to look at the entries for the final two cards of the Gulfstream Park West session this weekend.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Sunday might be the day that Mike Maker achieves a milestone the 48-year-old trainer said “has come up a lot faster than I had a right to imagine.”
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Four months of winter racing over Polytrack starts Wednesday night at Turfway Park as the Florence, Ky., oval continues to lag well behind other Kentucky tracks in purse offerings.
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LOUISVILLE, Ky. – At his career peak, Pat Byrne came within one vote of being named the Eclipse Award-winning trainer of 1997. Twenty years later, with a stable just a fraction of the size it once was, Byrne won a race for the first time in more than a year when Run Tappy captured a Thursday maiden race on the Churchill turf.
“I’ve just been going at my own pace these last six or seven years, kicking along with the same people,” said Byrne, 61. “I’m fine. I’m pretty well set because of how I did years ago. Nobody needs to feel sorry for me.”
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – C Z Rocket could make his next start in the Grade 1 Malibu on Dec. 26 at Santa Anita after staying unbeaten in three career starts with a two-length victory in a one-mile, second-level allowance Thursday at Churchill.
Trainer Al Stall Jr. said “we’re considering” the seven-furlong Malibu after C Z Rocket, racing closer to the early pace than in his two prior starts, outkicked J Boys Echo down the stretch to earn a 90 Beyer Speed Figure.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – They’ll scatter like dust in the wind when the Churchill Downs lights are dimmed following the 12th race Sunday. Horsemen and other racetrack affiliates with Florida, Louisiana, or Arkansas as their next stop will pack their bags in an end-of-November ritual long familiar in these parts.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Trainers Kiaran McLaughlin and Todd Pletcher have combined to win the last three runnings of the Discovery Stakes at Aqueduct, and horses from those two barns comprise half the field in Saturday’s modest renewal of the Grade 3, $250,000 race for 3-year-old males at Aqueduct.
McLaughlin, who won last year’s Discovery with Sticksstatelydude, on Saturday will send out the uncoupled pair of Spieth and True Timber, while Pletcher, who won this race in 2014 with Protonico and 2015 with Tommy Macho, sends out Bonus Points in the six-horse field.
