Plenty of Bill Mott-trained 2-year-olds begin their career racing a mile or longer on turf. Mott has sent out 86 such starters in the last five years. Only four of them won.
Mott entered the Hall of Fame 18 years ago at age 45. There’s a decent chance he knows his way around a young horse. If Mott is winning at 5 percent in a category, it’s because winning isn’t the primary goal for those horses. A first start is a means to an end, a time to learn and practice.
BENSALEM, Pa. – Trainer John Servis isn’t sure what the long-term future for Cathryn Sophia holds. He is pretty certain that she will give undefeated Songbird everything she has in Saturday’s Grade 1, $1 million Cotillion Stakes at Parx Racing.
“I’ve been confident in her from the first day she ran,” Servis said Wednesday morning at Parx. “She’s going to show up, she’s going to bring her game. If she’s good enough, that’s the question.”
Of the previous eight Breeders’ Cup events held at Santa Anita, six winners of the $2 million Juvenile were based in Southern California. Only head losses by He’s Had Enough (2012) and Lookin At Lucky (2009) have kept it from being a clean sweep for West Coast-based runners in the Juvenile.
Surprisingly, there have been some very nice prices among those winners, including Texas Red (13-1 in 2014), New Year’s Day (10-1 in 2013), and Action This Day (26-1 in 2003).
It is debatable as to who was the first person to utter the phrase “There is nothing so good for the inside of a man as the outside of a horse,” but it is clear that the vision of Songbird has been very good for her owner, Rick Porter.
“It’s good medicine for me,” Porter said.
Three of the last four runnings of the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Turf have been won by horses trained by Chad Brown, with Zagora scoring in 2012, Dayatthespa in 2014, and Stephanie’s Kitten in 2015.
Roughly six weeks away from the 2016 renewal, to be run Nov. 5 at Santa Anita, Brown has an opportunity to keep his winning ways going with three talented prospects being pointed to the race in Lady Eli, Dacita, and Sea Calisi. All three rank among the best turf mares in North America.
Early this year, Nyquist was the highest-profile 3-year-old in the nation. He had won all five of his starts at 2 and been voted an Eclipse Award as North America’s top juvenile male. By spring, following victories in the San Vicente, Florida Derby, and Kentucky Derby, his record stood at a perfect 8 for 8.
CYPRESS, Calif. – On Aug. 6, Frosted won the Grade 1 Whitney Stakes at Saratoga and Champagne Room won the Grade 2 Sorrento Stakes at Del Mar. A little farther afield from racing’s most prominent summertime venues, Sugar Buzz won the $54,725 Robert Dupret Derby on turf at the Sonoma County Fair in Santa Rosa, Calif.
The Dupret was the first stakes win for trainer Efrain Miranda. The 46-year-old trainer, based at Golden Gate Fields, will be after his first graded stakes win when Sugar Buzz starts in Saturday’s Grade 2 Los Alamitos Derby.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Majestic Harbor, the winner of the Grade 2 Alysheba at Churchill in May, has been turned out at the LaCroix equine rehabilitation facility near LaGrange, Ky., after suffering a minor leg injury. Owned by the Gallant Stable partnership, Majestic Harbor has not raced since finishing a close third in the Grade 1 Stephen Foster on June 18.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Trainer Dale Romans said he most likely will wait until the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile to run his latest stable star, Not This Time, and that he has another promising 2-year-old, Singing Bullet, to run instead in the Grade 1 Breeders’ Futurity on Oct. 8 at Keeneland.
Not This Time won the Grade 3 Iroquois Stakes by nearly nine lengths at Churchill last Saturday to become one of the very early favorites for the 2017 Kentucky Derby.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Mines and Magic will put her unbeaten record at Churchill Downs on the line when she seeks her first stakes victory Saturday night in a well-matched running of the $100,000 Dogwood Stakes.
Mines and Magic was odds-on in winning back-to-back main-track races at the Churchill spring meet before finishing third in the Indiana Oaks on dirt and seventh in the Del Mar Oaks on turf. She figures as one of the favorites among a field of eight 3-year-old fillies in the seven-furlong Dogwood, along with Marquee Miss, Emmzy, Saharan, and One True Kiss.
