Weast Hill will put his perfect Oaklawn Park record on the line Sunday, when he attempts to win his sixth race there. He goes in a six-furlong allowance for Arkansas-breds that drew a full field of 12.
Weast Hill won all three of his starts at Oaklawn last year and in 2015 launched his career at the track with a maiden special weight score and a victory in the $75,000 Rainbow. He will be making his first start since May on Sunday, and the time off was by design, said trainer Brad Cox.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Turco Bravo, a two-time winner of the Stymie Stakes over Aqueduct’s inner track, is gearing up for a return to the races and a bid for a Stymie three-peat.
On Thursday, Turco Bravo worked a mile in 1:46.48. He went his first three furlongs in 43.99 seconds and got his last quarter in 24.34 over Belmont Park’s training track. He was credited with a five-furlong workout in 1:02.49.
“Every eighth was faster than the one before,” trainer Gary Contessa said. “I love seeing that. We’re not far away.”
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Paulassilverlining, a finalist for the Eclipse Award in the female sprint division, hasn’t worked since her victory in the Garland of Roses Stakes at Aqueduct on Dec. 10. Still, trainer Michelle Nevin said Thursday that she is keeping the Grade 2, $300,000 Barbara Fritchie at Laurel on Feb. 18 very much in mind for the stakes-winning mare.
“It’s a possibility,” Nevin said. “Over the next two weeks, I’ll know what I’m doing.”
Nevin said that following the Garland of Roses, “it was time to give her a break.”
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Though Green Gratto is giving his connections signs that he will be ready to run again sooner rather than later, trainer Gaston Grant said Friday that he likely will wait to run the Grade 3 Toboggan winner until the Grade 3, $200,000 Tom Fool Handicap at Aqueduct on March 11.
Lady Aurelia, a two-time overseas stakes winner and a finalist for champion 2-year-old filly of 2016, is being aimed for another European summer campaign after kicking off her 2017 season this spring at Keeneland, trainer Wesley Ward said Thursday.
Ward, speaking by phone from his primary winter base in Florida, where he is already gearing up his 2-year-olds with swimming and long gallops, said Lady Aurelia will get her early preparation this year at Barbara Banke’s Stonestreet Training Center just outside of Ocala, Fla., and join his stable later.
Mo Tom is up to five furlongs in morning workouts as he prepares for his 4-year-old debut, which is likely to come Feb. 25 in the Grade 3 Mineshaft at Fair Grounds.
Mo Tom was one of the leading 3-year-olds last winter at Fair Grounds, winning the Lecomte Stakes and finishing a very troubled third in the Risen Star Stakes and fourth in the Louisiana Derby. Mo Tom ran eighth in the Kentucky Derby, decisively won the Ohio Derby, and then lost his form and wound up his 3-year-old season by finishing fifth in the Super Derby.
I’m a Chatterbox will be able to make the $400,000 Houston Ladies Classic after all.
The Grade 1-winning mare had been pointed for the Jan. 29 race at Sam Houston since returning from a short break following her fifth-place finish in the Breeders’ Cup Distaff, but when Fair Grounds was hit by an equine herpesvirus (EHV-1) outbreak in late December, which led to a state quarantine of the track, it seemed unlikely that she would be able to make the race.
Valadorna, a top Kentucky Oaks prospect on the strength of her encouraging three-start 2-year-old campaign, is set to make her first start of 2017 in a first-level allowance race next Friday at Fair Grounds.
Valadorna is one of six 3-year-old fillies entered to go a mile and 70 yards on the main track in the sixth race. She drew post 1 and has Florida-based Julien Leparoux, her regular pilot, named to ride.
NEW ORLEANS – Trainer Tom Amoss has long played the off-the-turf game at Fair Grounds as well as any horseman here, and Amoss might have found another sweet spot in the featured sixth race Sunday.
Quijote is entered for the main track only in a third-level allowance race that is also open to $80,000 claimers and carded for 5 1/2 furlongs on turf. If the rain that was expected all weekend falls at close to the forecast volume, Sunday’s grass races figure to wind up on dirt.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Ashleyluvssugar, a winner of two Grade 2 turf stakes in 2016, will be a strong favorite to win his fifth stakes in the $250,000 California Cup Classic for statebreds at 1 1/8 miles on turf at Santa Anita on Jan. 28.
Trained by Peter Eurton for the partnership of Sharon Alesia, Joe Ciaglia, and Bran Jam Racing, Ashleyluvssugar was second in the Grade 2 Hollywood Turf Cup at Del Mar on Nov. 25 and has been trained in recent months with the Cal Cup Classic as a first target for 2017.
