The twice-started exciting prospect Patch Adams will make his stakes, route, and 3-year-old debut in the Southwest Stakes on Jan. 25 at Oaklawn Park, trainer Brad Cox said Tuesday.
Patch Adams has breezed steadily at Payson Park since shipping to Florida from Kentucky in mid-December and flies from Florida to Arkansas on Monday.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Usually the hunted in 3-year-old maiden special weight races held here this time of the season, Todd Pletcher became the hunter instead on Saturday, sending out a pair of very promising youngsters, River Thames and Grande, to capture their career debuts while defeating a couple of odds-on favorites in the process.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Trainer Bob Baffert admitted he is still “trying to figure out” his multiple Grade 1-placed Imagination. As of Monday, this dilemma had Baffert sorting out whether to ship Imagination to South Florida for the $3 million Pegasus World Cup Invitational at Gulfstream on Jan. 25.
As they have done for months, the 3-year-old fillies Her Laugh and Simply Joking breezed together Sunday at Fair Grounds, working a half-mile for upcoming starts, but as he said would be the case after both horses won stakes races Dec. 21 at Fair Grounds, their trainer, Whit Beckman, will continue keeping the pair apart.
Simply Joking, who clocked 49 seconds in her Sunday breeze, starts Saturday at Fair Grounds in the $150,000 Silverbulletday, stretching out to a route after making a winning career debut in the six-furlong Letellier Stakes.
ARCADIA, Calif. – British jockey William Pyle will have his American debut Thursday at Santa Anita, a month after he arrived for a seven-week stay to ride in the mornings for trainer Dan Blacker.
Pyle, 22, will ride the Blacker-trained Victory Matters off a two-year layoff in a maiden race for California-breds at a mile on turf.
Pyle, who has won 54 races in the last four years, has been exercising Victory Matters in recent weeks.
“He gets on well with the horse,” Blacker said.
ARCADIA, Calif. – The rescheduled California Cup program at Santa Anita on Saturday, consisting of five stakes for statebreds, added four runners from the original lineups on Jan. 11.
The Jan. 11 program was one of three days of racing from Friday through Sunday that were canceled last weekend because of the effects of devastating wildfires in Los Angeles County.
Three of the five California Cup races this Saturday drew the same horses entered last weekend.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Even without live racing, parts of Santa Anita were packed over the weekend.
Last week, with terrifying wildfires striking areas near the track, Santa Anita opened its parking lot as a staging ground for power company vehicles. Last Friday, another section of the parking lot became a massive donation center after officials from the nearby city of Pasadena asked track executives if space was available.
Santa Anita general manager Nate Newby said the reaction from track officials was swift.
“We said, ‘Absolutely,’ ” Newby said.
Redistricting, runner-up in the Grade 2 Seabiscuit Handicap at Del Mar on Nov. 30, will not make the $1 million Pegasus World Cup Turf on Jan. 25, Brown said.
“He had a minor setback,” Brown said. “He’s going to be fine but now I’m considering taking my time and starting his season possibly in a race like the [Muniz Memorial Classic].”
The Grade 2, $300,000 Muniz is run at Fair Grounds on March 22.
Sierra Leone, the Breeders’ Cup Classic winner and finalist for the Eclipse Award in the 3-year-old male division, had his second work in a week on Sunday, going a half-mile in 50.60 seconds at Payson Park.
Brown said he has liked what he’s seen thus farm from Sierra Leone since he resumed training and is pointing the colt toward the $20 million Saudi Cup in Riyadh on Feb. 22.
Chancer McPatrick, the two-time Grade 1 winning 2-year-old, emerged from the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile last November with a couple of issues that will delay his return to the races at 3, but trainer Chad Brown still has hopes of getting him on the Kentucky Derby trail.
Brown said that Chancer McPatrick had “a tiny flake” surgically removed from a front ankle shortly after his sixth-place finish in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, a race from which he also came out of with a quarter crack on a hind foot.
