Flora Dora, the winner of the Busher Stakes but fourth in the Busanda, worked a half-mile in 47.66 seconds Friday over the Belmont Park training track. It was the fastest of 47 works at the distance.
Flora Dora is targeting the Grade 2, $300,000 Gazelle Stakes over Aqueduct’s main track April 9.
“We’re on track,” said trainer Marialice Coffey. “Everything is on go.”
Coffey said she is eager to get Flora Dora off the inner track. She said Flora Dora got cut up on her left hind leg in the Busher.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Jockey Gabriel Saez has bounced around from circuit to circuit throughout his career. In some respects, it has paid off. He has ridden a champion in Proud Spell and a Kentucky Derby favorite in Friesan Fire.
But Saez, 28, would like to settle down on the New York Racing Association circuit. He hopes he has taken a step in that direction with the winter meet he has had at Aqueduct. Through Thursday, Saez has ridden 19 winners, putting him in a tie for eighth in the inner-track standings. His 167 mounts are the second-fewest for any rider in the top 10.
Provided the track hasn’t washed away, Fair Grounds will host an 11-race card Monday, the final Monday program of the 2015-16 race meeting.
New Orleans was spared the brunt of the early portion of a massive rain event streaming north into Louisiana and neighboring states from the Gulf of Mexico starting Thursday, but close to two inches of rain fell overnight Thursday into Friday, and if the forecast holds, up to another six inches could fall before the system moves out of the area Saturday night.
Upstart, the winner of last year’s Grade 2 Holy Bull at Gulfstream Park, is scheduled to ship in to Oaklawn Park for the Grade 3, $350,000 Razorback Handicap next Saturday, Elliott Walden said of the horse co-owned by WinStar. Rick Violette trains Upstart. The horse will be ridden by Joe Bravo.
“Rick is very happy with him, said he’s training well, and we thought it was a good place to go two turns first race back,” said Walden.
Upstart will be making his first start since September, when he was fifth in the Pennsylvania Derby.
Cupid, a stylish maiden-race winner Feb. 7 in his third start, worked six furlongs in 1:11.60 on Friday at Santa Anita.
Cupid was entered in Saturday’s $400,000 San Felipe Stakes at Santa Anita, but trainer Bob Baffert said Cupid would be withdrawn in favor of a likely start in the Rebel Stakes at Oaklawn Park on March 19.
There were 243 recorded works Friday in advance of an expected rainstorm later in the day.
Jockeys Flavien Prat and Gary Stevens, who have combined to win 11 stakes at the Santa Anita winter-spring meeting, will ride the majority of April at Keeneland.
Stevens, who leads all jockeys with seven stakes wins at this meeting, said on Friday that he will ride at Santa Anita through the end of the meeting April 10 and be based in Kentucky through Kentucky Derby Day, May 7.
Stevens will miss the three-week spring meeting at Los Alamitos from April 14 to May 1. The Keeneland meeting runs April 8-29. Churchill Downs opens its spring-summer meeting April 30.
HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – Large fields have been the norm for the first pair of preps for 3-year-olds at this Oaklawn meet, and more of the same is expected next Saturday for the Grade 2, $900,000 Rebel.
The group of probables for the 1 1/16-mile race includes Ralis, the winner of last year’s Grade 1 Hopeful at Saratoga, and Discreetness and Suddenbreakingnews, who won Oaklawn’s Smarty Jones Stakes and Grade 3 Southwest. Entries will be taken Wednesday.
“I look for 10 and would not be surprised if 11 or 12 showed up,” said Oaklawn racing secretary Pat Pope.
Parx Racing has scheduled 31 stakes worth a cumulative $6 million for its 2016 season. The schedule is similar to last year, but the bottom stakes purse has been raised from $75,000 to $100,000, and the Grade 2, $1 million Pennsylvania Derby will follow the Travers at Saratoga by four weeks rather than three weeks, as it did in 2015.
Trainer Larry Jones said the Grade 1-winning filly I’m a Chatterbox likely will make her 2016 debut in the Grade 3 Doubledogdare on April 22 at Keeneland.
“We’re kind of eyeballing that one,” Jones said.
The 3-year-old colt Jensen, a two-time winner at this meet, will makes his stakes debut in the Grade 3 Spiral on Polytrack at Turfway Park. Jones pointed out that Jensen is a grandson of Hard Spun, who was undefeated on synthetics.
The multiple graded stakes winner Nates Mineshaft, who holds the track record for 1 1/8 miles at Fair Grounds, has been retired, trainer Anne Smith said. He’s 9.
Nates Mineshaft, who was a ridgling, has been gelded. How and where Nates Mineshaft, who is owned by Windy Hill Farm, will spend his retirement hasn’t been decided, Smith said.
