ARCADIA, Calif. – Champagne Room, the champion 2-year-old filly of 2016, will resume training this summer after a 90-day break to recover from recent surgery to remove a bone chip from an ankle.
Trainer Peter Eurton said on Wednesday that Champagne Room’s owners have opted to leave the filly in training after considering retiring and breeding her.
Few people have as unusual a workday as Damon Dilodovico. As he has done for years, Dilodovico trains a 20-horse stable at Laurel Park in the morning. In the afternoon, he changes hats and works for International Sound, a video production company that handles the Maryland tracks.
On Barbara Fritchie Stakes Day at Laurel last month, Dilodovico was manning the video camera in the winner’s circle during post-stakes interviews. Last Saturday, Dilodovico was on the other side of the lens after sending out Laki to win the $75,000 Not For Love Stakes.
Eclipse Award winner Classic Empire, who on Sunday refused to work at Palm Meadows in south Florida for the second time in less than three weeks, on Wednesday worked five furlongs in 1:01.40 at Winding Oaks Farm in Ocala, Fla., where he had been sent on Sunday.
Classic Empire worked in company and put away his workmate, according to Norman Casse, the son and assistant to trainer Mark Casse, who is vacationing this week.
FLORENCE, Ky. – Not a single one of the 3-year-olds entered in the Spiral Stakes had blipped the Kentucky Derby radar before this week. Still, a victory in the Turfway Park showcase on Saturday equates to a spot in the Derby starting gate, although most horsemen this side of Ken Ramsey aren’t quite ready to fully commit to proceeding that way in case they win.
Jockey Trevor McCarthy is coming off a huge week at Laurel Park during which he won with nine of his 21 mounts. A total of 27 races were run at Laurel last week.
On Friday, McCarthy won races 5, 6, and 7. He returned Saturday to win races 1, 2, and 3. The only race he lost during that span was race 8 on Friday, and you can’t blame him for that since he didn’t have a mount.
Trainer Mark Casse already has penciled in Noble Bird for the New Orleans Handicap at Fair Grounds on April 1, and he said he is considering sending a filly, too, for the Fair Grounds Oaks that day.
“You could see Pretty City Dancer or possibly Salty or Corporate Queen run there,” Casse said. “All of them are fillies we think are really good, and we just need to separate them.”
Yockey’s Warrior, the 5-year-old sprinter whose three-race win streak includes the Thanksgiving Handicap at Fair Grounds, will make his next start in the seven-furlong, $250,000 Commonwealth Stakes on April 8 at Keeneland, trainer Al Stall said.
Yockey’s Warrior most recently shipped to Oaklawn Park to win a high-level allowance race, and he had been considered for the six-furlong Count Fleet Sprint Handicap there next month, but Stall wants to focus on longer sprints with Yockey’s Warrior, who won at Keeneland last fall.
At this time the last two years, Chocolate Ride was preparing for the Grade 2 Muniz Memorial. Chocolate Ride won the 2015 Muniz, capping a Fair Grounds season where he rose from a middling first-level allowance runner to serious graded-stakes horse. Last year, he was a solid fourth in the race, beaten three lengths.
But expectations have been scaled back for Chocolate Ride this season, and rather than the Muniz, he runs in an optional claimer at about a mile on turf on a 10-race program unusually strong for a Thursday.
After a modest if successful 3-year-old debut in the Silverbulletday Stakes in January, Farrell looked more like the filly who romped to victory last fall in the Grade 2 Golden Rod when she won the Rachel Alexandra Stakes on Feb. 25 by more than three lengths.
Farrell came out of the Rachel Alexandra at Fair Grounds in great shape and continued to suggest that she is a filly on the rise with a five-furlong work in 1:00 on Saturday. Her work was the fastest of 54 at the distance that morning.
