OLDSMAR, Fla. – Two colts who ran huge races at Aqueduct last month to be second in graded stakes are getting a short winter break at Tampa Bay Downs as trainer Arnaud Delacour points them to graded stakes in Florida on Feb. 11.
Payoffs for the 50-cent pick five and 50-cent pick four at Los Alamitos on Sunday were the highest since the track began daytime Thoroughbred racing in 2014.
There was one winning ticket worth $265,806 in the pick five that covered the first five races, and one winning ticket worth $74,003 in the pick four that covered the second through fifth races.
Melatonin, the winner of two Grade 1 races this year and fifth in the Breeders’ Cup Classic at Santa Anita on Nov. 5, is in light training and will not start in 2017 until February at the earliest.
“He’s just jogging,” trainer David Hofmans said on Sunday. “I’ve had a foot issue with him.”
Lightstream, the winner of the Grade 2 Raven Run Stakes at Keeneland in October, is a candidate for the $300,000 La Brea Stakes for 3-year-old fillies at Santa Anita on Dec. 26.
Trained by Brian Lynch, Lightstream has won 4 of 6 starts and earned $457,000. She has won three stakes and was second in the Grade 1 Mother Goose Stakes at Belmont Park in July and third in the Grade 1 Test Stakes at Saratoga in July.
CYPRESS, Calif. – Avanti Bello, the winner of the Tiznow Stakes at Santa Anita in May, is set to start in Saturday’s Los Alamitos Winter Challenge, his seventh appearance in a stakes this year.
Trainer Doug O’Neill has no illusions about a second stakes win for 2016 for Avanti Bello, who is part of a supporting cast expected to face California Chrome in the Winter Challenge at 1 1/16 miles.
Much will be expected in the next six months from Mastery, who gave trainer Bob Baffert a record ninth win in the $300,000 Los Alamitos CashCall Futurity on Saturday.
Mastery is undefeated in three starts, including two stakes, and is the leading California-based hope for the Triple Crown. In the Grade 1 Los Alamitos Futurity, Mastery won the race at 1 1/16 miles by 7 1/4 lengths, a record margin in the 36th running of a race run at Hollywood Park from 1981-2013.
CYPRESS, Calif. – California Chrome worked five furlongs in 1:00.60 before dawn at Los Alamitos on Saturday, his last workout before his final career start in California in the Los Alamitos Winter Challenge on Dec. 17.
California Chrome worked alone under exercise rider Dihigi Gladney, who gave the 5-year-old a reminder in the final furlong with a backhanded tap with his whip.
“I wanted him to finish up,” Gladney said. “Sometimes he can ease up. He’ll cruise too much. I pay for it when I pop him. He’ll rebreak.”
Another Bond Girl will be a sentimental choice Sunday in the $50,000 Useeit at Remington. Her co-owner and trainer, Brent Davidson, remained at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas on Thursday as he continues to recover from a Nov. 18 training accident that left him with multiple fractures to his pelvis. He said he was thrown from a pony at his farm in Oklahoma.
“It’s been a little over three weeks, and I’m doing as good as can be expected,” said Davidson, 54.
Owner Danny Caldwell has spent the past several years building one of the winningest stables in North America. On Sunday, he is poised to take down a record eighth Thoroughbred title at his home track of Remington Park.
Caldwell sits fifth in wins in North America through Thursday, with 113 from 478 starts. He leads all Remington owners with 48 wins, and with two more before the meet closes, he would break his own local record for owner wins in a season.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Rudy Rodriguez nominated five horses to the $100,000 Gravesend Stakes at Aqueduct and said he might run as many as three in the six-furlong race scheduled for Dec. 18.
Rodriguez said he will likely run All Star Red and Drama King, with Summer Revolution as a possibility. Heaven’s Runway, who upset the Fall Highweight Handicap, is likely to skip it and perhaps point for the $100,000 Dave’s Friend Stakes at Laurel on Dec. 31. Voluntario, his other nominee, ran in a route race here Friday.
