ELMONT, N.Y. – The European contingent for Saturday’s Stars and Stripes Racing Festival at Belmont Park is not large, but it is, as always, dangerous.
Aidan O’Brien’s duo of Homesman and Whitecliffsofdover for the $1.2 million Belmont Derby and Key To My Heart for the $1 million Belmont Oaks arrived from Ireland on Tuesday and were due out of quarantine in time to train Thursday.
ELMONT, N.Y. – Practical Joke, the fifth-place finisher in the Kentucky Derby, and Battalion Runner, the runner-up in the Wood Memorial, return to the races in Saturday’s Grade 3, $400,000 Dwyer Stakes going a one-turn mile at Belmont Park.
ELMONT, N.Y. – Seymourdini forged a blitzkrieg on the front end in winning Monday’s State Dinner Stakes by 10 1/2 lengths. His trainer, Linda Rice, likely will try the same tactics with Matt King Coal in Saturday’s Grade 2, $750,000 Suburban Stakes at Belmont Park.
Matt King Coal looms the lone speed on paper in a six-horse field entered Tuesday for the Suburban at 1 1/4 miles.
“That’s what I want to be,” Rice said. “He’s really coming to hand. That’s a huge step up in competition to go against a Shaman Ghost, but I’d rather do it at a mile and a quarter.”
ELMONT, N.Y. – Mind Your Biscuits, the winner of the Group 1 Dubai Golden Shaheen in March, and Unified, who beat Mind Your Biscuits in the Grade 3 Gulfstream Park Sprint Championship in February, head a seven-horse field entered for Saturday’s Grade 2, $350,000 Belmont Sprint Championship.
The Belmont Sprint Championship, run at seven furlongs, is a Win and You’re In race for the Breeders’ Cup Sprint, run at six furlongs on Nov. 4 at Del Mar.
Apprentice jockey Evin Roman and journeyman Flavien Prat shared the riding title at the Santa Anita spring-summer meeting, which ended on Tuesday.
Each won 41 races at the meeting, with Prat winning twice on Tuesday to tie Roman.
The rematch will take place at the Del Mar summer meeting, which begins on July 19. During the current Los Alamitos meeting, which runs through July 16, Prat is scheduled to ride only the Los Alamitos Derby program on July 15, according to his agent, Derek Lawson. Prat, 24, is riding at Belmont Park this weekend.
Songbird worked seven furlongs in 1:25.80 under jockey Mike Smith at Santa Anita on Wednesday as she prepares for the Grade 1 Delaware Handicap on July 15.
Smith said he is pleased by Songbird’s willingness to go only as fast as asked in her works.
“She’s been doing anything I want her to do,” Smith said. “If I ask her to pick it up, she will. If I ask her to gear down, she does.”
Magic Mark is home with trainer Ron Ellis at Santa Anita, but many of the 7-year-old’s best races have occurred more than 30 miles away at Los Alamitos.
In three starts at Los Alamitos, all in stakes, Magic Mark has never been worse than third, and he won the 2015 Bertrando Stakes for California-bred milers. Last September, he was second to Soi Phet in the E.B. Johnston Stakes for Cal-bred milers.
That record makes Magic Mark a contender in Saturday’s $100,000 Bertrando Stakes at Los Alamitos.
Interest in Gulfstream Park’s spring session continues to grow from horsemen and horseplayers alike.
The 2017 spring meeting concluded Friday and for the second straight year showed big gains at the mutuel windows. Handle for the session totaled $312 million, up 13 percent from the $276 million wagered during the corresponding period in 2016. Handle on the inaugural spring meeting here in 2015 was $246 million. The average daily handle has also climbed steadily from $4.2 million in 2015 to a record $5.3 million this past spring.
Tyler Gaffalione said he grew up idolizing Jerry Bailey and basically tried to copy everything he did as a rider. On Tuesday, Gaffalione took copying Bailey to another level when he matched the Hall of Fame rider’s record from 22 years ago by becoming only the second jockey in track history to win seven races on a single card at Gulfstream Park.
Bailey won seven races on Florida Derby Day in March 1995. He fell a nose short in his quest for an eighth victory that afternoon when he was defeated aboard Suave Prospect by Thunder Gulch in the Florida Derby.
Rose Brier, who was transferred to trainer Jane Cibelli as a 4-year-old maiden in 2013 and went on to win 14 races and more than $527,000, has been retired, it was announced Wednesday.
Rose Brier, an 8-year-old gelded son of Mizzen Mast, won four Virginia-bred stakes at Laurel Park and Pimlico over the years. He also won the open Henry Clark Stakes at Laurel in April 2016. He scored his most important win last November at Gulfstream Park West in the Grade 3 Tropical Turf Handicap.
