OZONE PARK, N.Y. – To date, horsemen have been timid when it comes to committing their 3-year-olds to the Grade 2, $750,000 Wood Memorial on April 8 at Aqueduct.
El Areeb, Cloud Computing, and Irish War Cry are the notable names expected to run. Trainer Todd Pletcher, a four-time Wood winner with a plethora of 3-year-olds again this year, would seemingly have to run one or two but has yet to finalize plans.
The late horseman Harvey Vanier had a direct influence on the result of the Grade 2, $350,000 Azeri last Saturday at Oaklawn Park. Streamline, who won the race, represents the best of the Illinois-based breeding and racing program Vanier operated with his wife, Nancy.
Mopotism, who won the local prep for the Sunland Oaks, the Island Fashion, has a couple of options for her next start, trainer Doug O’Neill said Tuesday. Mopotism ran third in the Grade 1 Starlet at Santa Anita as a juvenile last year.
“It looks like she’ll be pointed for the Ashland or Fair Grounds Oaks,” O’Neill said. “It’s just really whatever is in her best interest.”
ARCADIA, Calif. – The Grade 2 San Luis Rey Stakes at Santa Anita may be in the midst of a revival.
Saturday’s $200,000 San Luis Rey Stakes at 1 1/2 miles on turf had 12 expected starters on Wednesday, a change from earlier in this decade, when the race drew fields of five in 2012 and 2014 and six in 2011.
Del Mar has scheduled 41 stakes for its summer meeting, which runs July 19 to Sept. 4, including several that serve as prep races for the Breeders’ Cup on Nov. 3-4. Del Mar is hosting the Breeders’ Cup for the first time this year.
The summer stakes schedule is led by the $1 million Pacific Classic on Aug. 19, one of five races that offer an automatic berth for the winner to a Breeders’ Cup race. The winner of the Pacific Classic will receive a fees-paid berth to the $6 million BC Classic.
CINCINNATI – Kitten’s Cat was pegged a lukewarm 4-1 morning-line favorite when a full field of 3-year-olds was drawn Wednesday at the Jack Cincinnati Casino for the Grade 3, $500,000 Spiral Stakes, the annual showcase event at Turfway Park across the Ohio River in Florence, Ky.
Long before trainer Bob Baffert was inducted into the racing Hall of Fame, saddled a Triple Crown winner in American Pharoah, and won the world’s richest Thoroughbred race with Pegasus World Cup hero Arrogate, he spent the occasional weekend at Sunland Park in New Mexico.
The teenaged Baffert soaked in stories told by prominent horsemen Bubba Cascio, Walter Merrick, and J.B. Montgomery during visits from Arizona. He would later return to Sunland as a trainer in his own right and experienced a life-changing win at the track in a derby for Quarter Horses.
FLORENCE, Ky. – Kent Sweezey is coming home. Sweezey has been allotted six stalls at the Trackside training center in Louisville, where he will embark on a solo training career using his home state of Kentucky as his primary base.
Sweezey, 31, has worked the last seven years in California and New York as a stable hand and assistant for Eoin Harty, Christophe Clement, and, most recently, Jimmy Jerkens. For Jerkens, he worked closely with such stars as Wicked Strong, Effinex, Unified, and Shaman Ghost.
Katie Davis went down hard in a spill at Laurel Park on March 11. She took off her mounts the next day but dusted herself off and, despite still being sore, came back a week later to win back-to-back races, including the first stakes of her career.
Davis, 25, is the older sister of Dylan Davis and the younger sibling of Jackie Davis, both of whom ride in New York. Their father is Robbie Davis, an elite New York jockey during the 1980s and ‘90s who won more than 3,300 races and whose mounts earned in excess of $115 million.
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.
