ARCADIA, Calif. - A muddy start to the winter-spring meeting has been just fine with trainer Richard Baltas.
On consecutive Saturdays, Baltas-trained runners have won stakes scheduled for turf and transferred to a wet main track because of rain. Goodyearforroses won the $98,000 Robert Frankel Stakes for fillies and mares at 1 1/8 miles on Dec. 31. Saturday, Watch This Cat won the $98,000 Las Cienegas Stakes for female sprinters. The race was scheduled for the hillside turf course.
ARCADIA, Calif. - Gormley is likely to have a nine-week gap between races after winning his 3-year-old debut by a head in a thrilling running of the $100,690 Sham Stakes at a mile on Saturday at Santa Anita.
Trainer John Shirreffs said on Sunday that he is leaning toward the $200,000 San Felipe Stakes at 1 1/16 miles on March 11 for Gormley’s next start. The Grade 2 San Felipe is a key prep for the $1 million Santa Anita Derby at 1 1/8 miles on April 8.
“I would like to give him time,” Shirreffs said. “The San Felipe is a logical spot.
ARCADIA, Calif. - Arrogate worked six furlongs in 1:11.94 prior to the first race at Santa Anita on Sunday, an exercise that leaves the star 4-year-old colt on schedule for an expected start in the $12 million Pegasus World Cup at Gulfstream Park on Jan. 28.
Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies runner-up Valadorna worked five furlongs Thursday in 1:01.60, her longest timed workout since she arrived at Fair Grounds from Florida for trainer Mark Casse to prepare for her 2017 debut.
Casse has made no commitments, but Valadorna is only a maiden winner and thus is eligible for a first-level allowance race. Casse said last month that he would consider running Valadorna in an allowance prep for the Feb. 25 Rachel Alexandra Stakes, and there’s such a race in the condition book for Jan. 27.
The Hal’s Hope is one of three graded stakes to be run here at Gulfstream Park next weekend, along with the Grade 2 Fort Lauderdale and Grade 3 Marshua’s River.
The Grade 3 Hal’s Hope attracted 20 nominations, including four from leading trainer Todd Pletcher – Tommy Macho, Zulu, Madefromlucky, and Stanford. All four also could be in consideration for the $400,000 Poseidon on the Pegasus undercard on Jan. 28.
Among the others pointing for the one-mile Hal’s Hope are Ami’s Flatter, Bird Song, Realm, Dolphus, and Team Colors.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Trainer Rick Violette, the president of New York’s Jockey Injury Compensation Fund, is hopeful that legislation will be passed this year that will help keep workman’s compensation premiums in line with 2016.
On paper, it appears that owners and trainers on the NYRA circuit will pay a $3,000 premium to the Jockey Injury Compensation Fund this year, a 16.5 percent increase over the 2016 premium of $2,575. Owners and trainers were required to pay $1,500 by Jan. 1, with the other $1,500 due June 1.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Jason Blewitt, who has worked for the New York Racing Association since 1998, was fired Thursday as the company eliminated his position as television host and analyst.
Blewitt, 38, began working at NYRA part time in the media communications department in September 1998. He started working full time in that department in May 2000. Blewitt eventually left the communications department for the television department, where he was a presence on both NYRA’s in-house simulcast show and, for a decade, the host of NYRA’s nightly recap program.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Mo Town, who won the Grade 2 Remsen at Aqueduct in November, returned to the work tab Friday at Payson Park as he begins preparations for his 3-year-old campaign.
According to trainer Tony Dutrow, Mo Town worked a half-mile in 50.60 seconds over the dirt surface at Payson Park, a training center in Indiantown, Fla.
“All is very good,” Dutrow said. “The horse is happy. I wanted to get started today. He did it matter-of-factly.”
Besides trainer Alice Cohn, whose horse had to be euthanized after it contracted the equine herpesvirus and got very sick on Christmas Day, no trainer at Fair Grounds has been harder hit by the ongoing herpes outbreak than Michelle Lovell.
Lovell is the main occupant of barn 14, which housed the deceased Cohn-trained horse, the first horse to test positive for EHV-1 at Fair Grounds. A second horse in the barn, trained by Jeff Thornbury, also got sick from EHV-1 and now is isolated on another part of the Fair Grounds backstretch.
Pegasus World Cup contender Eragon visited the Gulfstream Park track for the first time Friday, jogging two miles before reversing direction and galloping a little more than a mile after the first renovation break.
Eragon’s arrival at Gulfstream was delayed one week after the Argentinian-bred was detained in quarantine in Miami until Thursday morning, forcing trainer Laura Wohlers to cancel her original plan of running the multiple Group 1 winner in the Grade 3 Hal’s Hope here next Saturday.
