Delaware Park, the Delaware Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association, CANTER Delaware, and Mid-Atlantic Horse Rescue will hold a free open house Sunday featuring retiring racehorses for sale.
The open house will run from 9 a.m. to noon Eastern by the Lasix and receiving barns on the Delaware Park backstretch. To access the open house, enter through the stable gate (Gate 4).
John W. Baird has sent out a steady stream of winners since 1982, first at Fairmount Park and Hawthorne Race Course in his native Illinois and then for the last 20 years or so at Mountaineer Park in West Virginia.
As of Wednesday morning, Baird needed one victory to reach 2,000 winners.
The Friday card at Laurel Park is topped by a first-level optional-claiming race for 2-year-olds at a mile on turf. Monsoon K S A, who finished fourth in the Grade 2 With Anticipation Stakes at Saratoga in his most recent start, is the horse to beat, but there are other promising runners in the field.
Phlash Phelps was perfect last year, winning all four of his starts, including the Maryland Million Turf. This season, things haven’t gone as smoothly.
Phlash Phelps is 1 for 4 this year as a 5-year-old, but on Saturday at Laurel Park, he’ll have a chance to get back on track when he seeks a repeat victory on Maryland Million Day. Phlash Phelps will be a top contender in the Turf, as he will be moving back into restricted company after making three of his starts this year against open company.
A waiting game is about to begin for some owners and trainers with hopefuls for the $1 million Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf at Santa Anita on Nov. 4.
There are likely to be approximately 20 fillies pre-entered for the one-mile race next week, with a maximum of 14 allowed to start. When the list of pre-entries is announced next Wednesday, several runners will be on an also-eligible list, waiting to see if there are defections from the list of invited runners before entries are taken Oct. 31.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia – All-sources and ontrack handle at Hastings both were up at the 2016 meet that concluded Sunday.
All-sources handle for the 53-day meet was $31,509,665, up 5.9 percent from $29,760,483 last year, when the meet had the same number of days. The ontrack number was up marginally to $6,826,077 from $6,707,777 last year.
Christophe Clement and Graham Motion are considering the $2 million Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies for their recent Grade 1 winners, but both horsemen are taking a cautious approach and are keeping close tabs on how their horses recover from their races.
Clement conditions Yellow Agate, the winner of the Oct. 8 Frizette Stakes at Belmont Park. Motion trains Dancing Rags, who won the Alcibiades the previous day. The races are part of the Breeders’ Cup Challenge Series, giving Yellow Agate and Dancing Rags fees-paid berths in the Juvenile Fillies.
Stonetastic has been declared out of the $1 million Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint following a runner-up finish as the favorite Oct. 8 in the Thoroughbred Club of America Stakes at Keeneland.
“We needed a lot of scenarios to go right to convince us to go,” said Kelly Breen, who trains Stonetastic for the Stoneway Farm of Jim Stone. “We just couldn’t get enough stars to align. If she would’ve won at Keeneland, we probably would’ve gone, but she didn’t. That was the main thing.”
MIAMI – Trainer Larry Bates’s 2-year-old filly Brahms Cat may be the one to beat in Wednesday’s $34,000 allowance/optional-claiming feature at Gulfstream Park West.
Brahms Cat, a daughter of the late sire Wildcat Heir, brought $30,000 at the Ocala Breeders’ Sales Co. this year. Bates has been patient with the young filly owned by Bluestone Thoroughbreds LLC.
