SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Sagamore Farm and trainer Horacio DePaz have won five 2-year-old races from 10 starters this year, including the Tremont Stakes at Belmont Park with He Hate Me. This weekend, they will look for more success with runners in Saturday’s Adirondack and Sunday’s Saratoga Special – Grade 2, $200,000 stakes for juvenile females and juveniles, respectively.
In the Adirondack, Sagamore and DePaz will send out Proportionality and Southampton Way in the eight-horse field.
Colonelsdarktemper, the winner of last Saturday’s West Virginia Derby at Mountaineer, came out of the race in good condition and could make his next start in the Grade 3, $400,000 Oklahoma Derby at Remington Park on Sept. 24, trainer Jinks Fires said.
Fires said he is also considering other races, including the Grade 1, $1 million Pennsylvania Derby on Sept. 23, but his suspicion is that the latter race will prove a far more demanding spot.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Time Test was sent from Europe to the U.S. by Juddmonte Farms with the hope that he would have a campaign similar to Flintshire’s in 2016. It has not quite worked out that way.
After two runner-up finishes in graded stakes at distances of 1 1/8 miles and 1 1/4 miles, Time Test will shorten up to a mile in Saturday’s Grade 1, $500,000 Fourstardave Handicap at Saratoga.
The signature race of the Ellis Park meeting, the Grade 3, $100,000 Groupie Doll Stakes, takes place Sunday, with a field of eight or more expected to be entered when the race is drawn Thursday. Contested at a mile on the main track, the race is shaping up to be competitive.
Two probable starters trained by Brad Cox, Tiger Moth and Pinch Hit, will garner mutuel support, as should Walkabout, a graded stakes winner at Churchill Downs this spring, and Put Da Blame On Me, a winner of two straight one-mile allowance races at Churchill.
Elite grass sprinter Lady Aurelia, the winner of the Group 1 King’s Stand at Royal Ascot on June 20, is ready for another British invasion after working an effortless five furlongs in 1:02 on the Keeneland turf Tuesday as she prepares for the Group 1 Nunthorpe Stakes at York on Aug. 25.
Trainer Wesley Ward, reached by telephone Tuesday in New York, where he was attending the Fasig-Tipton Saratoga selected yearling sale, was thrilled with her breeze, in which she outworked Grade 1-winning older horse Hootenanny under a hammerlock from jockey Julio Garcia.
ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. – Permian began his 2017 campaign by finishing third in a Class 2 handicap at Bath in England. That is a long way from being the 2-1 morning-line second choice Saturday in the Grade 1 Secretariat Stakes.
“He was definitely above average as a 2-year-old, but I think we’d all be quick to admit going into this season we didn’t expect him to reach the heights he has,” said Charlie Johnston, assistant to his father, trainer Mark Johnston.
ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. – During a very successful training career that began in 2013, Arnaud Delacour has sent out close to 1,050 starters. But Hawksmoor, who runs in the Grade 1 Beverly D. on Saturday, will be his first at Arlington.
Hawksmoor is part of a deep, very competitive 10-horse field in the 1 3/16-mile Beverly D. From the rail out, the entrants are Dacita, Prado’s Sweet Ride, Kitten’s Roar, Dona Bruja, Grand Jete, Zipessa, Rainha Da Bateria, Sarandia, Hawksmoor, and Rain Goddess.
ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. – Ascend made the lead at the top of the stretch just two Saturdays ago in the 1 3/8-mile Bowling Green Stakes at Saratoga but was swallowed up by deep closers late in the race and checked in fourth as the 9-5 favorite.
Still, the disappointing performance from Ascend, who had won the Grade 1 Manhattan in his previous race, had nothing to do with trainer Graham Motion deciding to run Ascend back two weeks later in the Arlington Million.
“I already had in mind that we could run back in this race, so it wasn’t a knee-jerk reaction,” Motion said.
ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. – The horse named Scottish is anything but bounded by national borders.
Scottish was purchased by Godophin at the end of his 3-year-old season as a prospect for the international circuit, and Godolphin’s vision of what Scottish might become has come to fruition. Scottish finished second last fall in the Group 1 Caulfield Cup in Australia, has come to Arlington this week for a run in the Arlington Million, is set to travel to Australia again in early autumn, and could wind up in Dubai over the winter.
DEL MAR, Calif. – Bound for Nowhere, who finished 10th in the Group 1 Prix Maurice de Gheest in Deauville, France, as the lone American-based runner in the field, will be given the rest of the year off, owner and trainer Wesley Ward said on Wednesday.
Bound for Nowhere won races at Turfway Park and Keeneland early in the year and was fourth in the Group 1 Commonwealth Cup at Royal Ascot in June in his stakes debut. In the Prix Maurice de Gheest, Bound for Nowhere was near the front early but faded in the final quarter-mile.
