Something’s got to give when a stellar field assembles at Santa Anita on Nov. 5 for what may be the most challenging and competitive Breeders’ Cup Sprint in recent memory.
Lord Nelson, A. P. Indian, Joking, and Delta Bluesman, the four Breeders’ Cup Challenge race winners in the division, will enter the Sprint having won 18 of their last 19 starts combined. They’ll be joined in the gate by Drefong and Masochistic, who are a perfect 5 for 5 between them and are both Grade 1 winners in 2016.
Mongolian Saturday, a smallish but scrappy gelding, is nippy in the shed row and has to hit the track first rather than deigning to walk in line in the post parade.
But when his feet touched the turf course last Saturday at Keeneland, he was all business.
“He was very calm,” trainer Enebish Ganbat said. “He was never calm like today. I was surprised – [I thought], ‘Maybe he’s wrong.’ ”
The last two prep races for the $1 million Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint were run last weekend, but perhaps the biggest piece of news regarding the Nov. 5 race at Santa Anita was the revelation from trainer Todd Pletcher that Curalina will be pre-entered in both the Filly and Mare Sprint and the $2 million BC Distaff.
The undefeated Sweet Loretta will head into the $2 million Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies at Santa Anita on Nov. 5 as the top 2-year-old filly on the East Coast. The 1 1/16-mile race will be her first start in nine weeks.
The extended time between races is not necessarily a bad thing. Last year, trainer Todd Pletcher ran 16 horses in stakes at Keeneland over Breeders’ Cup weekend. He experienced his greatest success with horses coming in off short layoffs.
Berned, a promising 2-year-old daughter of Bernardini trained by Tom Albertrani, is being pointed to the Grade 3, $200,000 Tempted on Nov. 5 at Aqueduct.
Berned has raced twice, including a win in a maiden race at Belmont Park on Sept. 10. Albertrani said Berned was not quite ready to return in last weekend's Grade 1 Frizette.
"She's been training okay, but I think she'll benefit from having a little more time before her next start," Albertrani said of Berned, a $550,000 Keeneland yearling purchase owned by Three C Stables, West Point Thoroughbreds and Robert Masiello.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Santa Anita is planning to conduct racing on a three-day schedule for two consecutive weeks in April to rest the turf course, senior vice-president Joe Morris said last weekend.
Speaking at a forum conducted by the Thoroughbred Owners of California, Morris said the three-day racing weeks will be held on April 14-16 and 21-23, the first two weeks of the track’s spring-summer meeting. During that time, there will be no turf racing.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Gloryzapper won Sunday’s Grade 3 L.A. Woman Stakes for sprinters at Santa Anita, but trainer Phil D’Amato said he hasn’t decided whether to run her in the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint here on Nov. 5.
“We’ll take a look at it and decide what we want to do,” D’Amato said.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Jockey Norberto Arroyo Jr., second in the jockey standings at the Santa Anita autumn meeting through Monday, has been suspended three days for causing interference in the first race on Sunday.
The suspension is scheduled for Sunday and the following Thursday and Friday, but Arroyo’s brother and agent, Nelson, said on Monday that he plans to launch an appeal.
Through Monday, Flavien Prat led all riders with 10 wins, one more than Arroyo.
ELMONT, N.Y. – Grand Tito, a multiple-graded-stakes-winning 6-year-old horse, is dealing with a mild case of laminitis, according to trainer Gustavo Delgado.
Grand Tito is based at the Ruffian Equine Clinic across the street from Belmont Park. The horse developed laminitis after a shoeing incident the week of the Joe Hirsch Turf Classic, a race he was being pointed to but did not participate in.
ELMONT, N.Y. – The multiple stakes winner Dacita will not make the Breeders’ Cup, trainer Chad Brown said, owing to a physical issue that will sideline her for the remainder of 2016.
Dacita won the Grade 1 Diana at Saratoga and the Grade 2 New York this year and most recently finished second by a nose in the Grade 2 Canadian at Woodbine.
