HOT SPRINGS, Ark. - Champion and highweight Stellar Wind drew post 3 in a field of six fillies and mares for the Grade 1, $600,000 Apple Blossom Handicap, to be run Friday at Oaklawn. Entries for the 1 1/16-mile race were taken Tuesday.
The Apple Blossom is part of the Racing Festival of the South, a series of seven stakes worth a total of $3.45 million run over the final three dates of the meet, which closes Saturday.
HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – Midnight Storm, the runner-up in last month’s Grade 1 Santa Anita Handicap, will target the Grade 2, $750,000 Oaklawn Handicap on Saturday. Trainer Phil D’Amato said the horse emerged from a work last Friday in excellent condition and was scheduled to fly from Southern California to Arkansas on Tuesday.
“He just hasn’t missed a beat,” D’Amato said Monday. “He’s training so well right now. He’s just full of himself. It’s all systems go, is basically what he’s telling me, so we’re going to head on out.”
HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – Blinkers off worked well for Irap last weekend in the Blue Grass Stakes, and his trainer, Doug O’Neill, hopes the same equipment change will benefit Rockin Rudy when the promising 3-year-old runs Saturday in the Grade 1, $1 million Arkansas Derby.
The race closes out the meet at Oaklawn Park and offers 170 eligibility points for the Kentucky Derby, to be divided among the first four finishers on a scale of 100-40-20-10.
LEXINGTON, Ky. – With the connections of so many 3-year-olds with plenty of eligibility points clamoring to make the field for the May 6 Kentucky Derby, the Grade 3, $200,000 Lexington Stakes on Saturday will not produce a Derby starter.
The 1 1/16-mile Lexington is worth 17 points, including 10 to the winner, but none of the projected starters will have enough points to make the Derby. Probables include Convict Pike, No Dozing, Resiliency, Tiz a Slam, and West Coast.
LEXINGTON, Ky. – The last two Grade 1 races of the 15-day spring meet will be run this week on the turf course, with the $300,000 Maker’s 46 Mile set for Friday and the $350,000 Jenny Wiley anchoring a slate of four Saturday stakes.
Lady Eli, the star turf mare trained by Chad Brown, will make her 5-year-old debut in the 1 1/16-mile Jenny Wiley, which shapes up as perhaps the best race of the meet. Other probable starters include Catch a Glimpse, Time and Motion, and Dickinson.
LEXINGTON, Ky. – Nobody likes to lose, but Buff Bradley couldn’t be blamed for leaving Keeneland on Sunday with a good feeling, even after his stable star, Divisidero, lost by a nose to Projected in a turf allowance.
“This kind of effort was exactly what we were looking for,” said Bradley, who trains Divisidero for the Gunpowder Farms of Tom Keithley.
HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – The Grade 1, $1 million Arkansas Derby lost a major player in One Liner on Monday, while travel plans were set for another top contender in champion Classic Empire. The race, which carries 170 Kentucky Derby eligibility points, will be run Saturday.
One Liner, the undefeated winner of the Grade 3 Southwest Stakes, will not start in the Arkansas Derby and is off the Kentucky Derby trail, trainer Todd Pletcher said.
LEXINGTON, Ky. – Not a whole lot was settled by the surprising results of the Blue Grass Stakes on Saturday at Keeneland: The top five finishers in the field of seven all have enough qualifying points and appear likely to run back May 6 in the Kentucky Derby.
OLDSMAR, Fla. – No Dozing, the runner-up in the Grade 2 Remsen Stakes last fall, is being rerouted to the Grade 3, $200,000 Lexington Stakes at Keeneland on Saturday after posting a bullet workout at Tampa Bay Downs over the weekend.
No Dozing, most recently fourth in the Grade 2 Tampa Bay Derby on March 11, worked five furlongs in 1:01 last Saturday, the fastest of 17 works at the distance here that day. Trainer Arnaud Delacour had said following the Tampa Bay Derby that No Dozing was likely to await the $125,000 Federico Tesio Stakes at Laurel Park on April 22.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Trainer Mick Ruis went nearly 10 years between winners.
Ruis, 57, won an optional claimer at 6 1/2 furlongs last Saturday at Santa Anita with Rockport Babe ($38.60), his 15th starter at the meeting and his first winner since 2007.
“That feels good,” he said Sunday.
Later Sunday, Ruis won his first stakes as a trainer when the Grade 1 winner Union Strike won her first start of the year in the $79,290 Santa Paula Stakes for 3-year-old fillies at 6 1/2 furlongs.
