ARCADIA, Calif. – Melatonin would enter the Breeders’ Cup Classic as the only starter with two Grade 1 wins this year at Santa Anita. He also would enter the Nov. 5 race following the longest layoff of any in the prospective field – 133 days.
Winner of the Santa Anita Handicap and Gold Cup at Santa Anita his most recent start on June 25, Melatonin has been out of sight and out of mind. But on Sunday at Santa Anita, Melatonin a posted a flashy work that showed his summer setback is history.
ARCADIA, Calif. – For most of her career, Beholder was automatic.
She won 17 of her first 22 races, including Grade 1 stakes for five straight years. She won three championships and was practically unbeatable at Santa Anita, where she won 13 of her first 14 starts.
“There haven’t been many as good, for as long, as her,” Beholder’s trainer Richard Mandella said early Sunday morning. “I’m not going to complain.”
ARCADIA, Calif. – They’ve conquered the locals, now bring on the world.
Ambitious Brew and Holy Lute are bound for the $1 million Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint at Santa Anita on Nov. 5 after winning divisions of the Grade 3 Eddie D Stakes on Friday’s opening day of the autumn meeting.
Trainers Marty Jones and Jim Cassidy said on Saturday that the BC Turf Sprint figures in the plans for their runners.
Lord Nelson will be favored to win the $300,000 Santa Anita Sprint Championship on Oct. 8 and is likely to be trainer Bob Baffert’s lone runner in the Grade 1 race at six furlongs.
Lord Nelson won the Grade 1 Bing Crosby Stakes at Del Mar on July 31 and is considered a leading candidate for the Breeders’ Cup Sprint here on Nov. 5.
Baffert said Friday he will not run Power Jam, winner of the Pirate’s Bounty Stakes at Del Mar on Sept. 5. Power Jam has been taken out of training, Baffert said.
Baffert did not elaborate on the nature of Power Jam’s condition.
Kentucky Derby winner Nyquist returned to California on Wednesday and was on the track Thursday morning for a jog, but what comes next is uncertain.
“He’s back here, he looks fantastic, but plans are up in the air right now,” trainer Doug O’Neill said.
O’Neill said that if Nyquist is to run in the Breeders’ Cup at Santa Anita the weekend of Nov. 4-5, he will run in the Classic. He said there is no interest, for instance, in the Dirt Mile.
Texas Red, the 2014 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile winner who has not raced since the 2015 Travers, returned to trainer Keith Desormeaux’s barn at Santa Anita on Thursday and is being pointed to the winter meeting at Santa Anita, which begins Dec. 26.
Texas Red has had a series of minor injuries that have kept him on the sidelines for more than a year. He was near a return earlier this year at Santa Anita, but needed more time. Desormeaux said he has been recuperating at nearby Peacefield Farm in Southern California.
Jockey Dennis Collins could be facing permanent paralysis from the waist down following a spill last Sunday at the Downs at Albuquerque. The 53-year-old remained at a New Mexico hospital Friday, recovering from surgery to stabilize his spine due to an extensive T-4 compression fracture, according to his fiancée, trainer Heather Brock.
The surgery was performed Monday at the University of New Mexico Hospital in Albuquerque.
Keeneland begins its 17-day meet next Friday with the usual barrage of major Breeders’ Cup preps on the opening three-day FallStars Weekend. Nine graded stakes, with all but two carrying Win and You’re In provisions toward the Nov. 4-5 Breeders’ Cup, will be run Friday through Sunday at the Lexington, Ky., track.
Here are some quick takes on the weekend races. Entries for the Friday opener will be drawn Tuesday, with a 72-hour draw schedule also in effect for Saturday and Sunday and for most of a meet that runs through Oct. 29.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – With a decision on her next start expected Sunday morning, Tepin was sent through her final pre-race work when breezing a half-mile in 49 seconds Friday morning on the Saratoga turf.
Tepin, winner of the 2015 Breeders’ Cup Mile against males and a leading contender for 2016 Horse of the Year, will prep for a title defense in the Nov. 5 BC Mile by running in either the Shadwell Turf Mile or the First Lady, both Grade 1 one-mile turf events next Saturday at Keeneland.
ELMONT, N.Y. – Haveyougoneaway, the New York-bred filly who won a pair of stakes at Saratoga, including the Grade 1 Ballerina, worked four furlongs in 47 seconds over the Belmont main track Thursday morning. She is preparing for the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint at Santa Anita on Nov. 5.
With the exercise rider Orlando Tapia maintaining a good hold on Haveyougoneaway, the filly went her first quarter in 23.11 seconds and her second quarter in 23.89.
