There will be some new trainers stabled at Delaware Park this season, including Gerald Bennett, who will wrap up the Tampa Bay Downs training title Sunday, and Keith Nations, who will be splitting his stable between Delaware and Parx Racing.
Bennett will have about 60 stalls at Delaware. Last summer, he made the bulk of his starts at Presque Isle Downs and Monmouth Park. Bennett has not stabled at Delaware since 1998.
Trevor McCarthy and Victor Carrasco are one-two in the jockey standings at Laurel Park, with McCarthy leading, 61-57. The meet began Jan. 1 and ends Sunday.
Although the winner has yet to be decided, this will be the sixth time since the Laurel fall meet of 2013 that McCarthy and Carrasco have taken down the top two spots in the standings.
Carrasco defeated McCarthy, 69-50, at the 2013 fall meet. McCarthy came back to be leading rider over Carrasco at all three Maryland Jockey Club meets in 2014.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Basking in the glory of winning the Spiral Stakes at Turfway Park on April 2, owner Ken Ramsey announced a proposal to anyone willing to front a $200,000 supplemental fee to make the colt eligible to the Triple Crown: Do so, and he would split with his potential partner whatever Oscar Nominated earned in the series of races.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Trainer Mark Casse decided Wednesday not to enter Fellowship in Saturday’s Kentucky Derby, where he would have been the first horse on the also-eligible list, and instead will run him that same afternoon in the Pat Day Mile.
By rule in Kentucky, no horse can be entered in two different races on the same card. Fellowship has been sitting 21st on the Kentucky Derby points list for the past two weeks, which meant he needed one defection out of the top 20 to get into the race. A defection never came by the time entries closed for the Derby late Wednesday morning.
Last fall, the Mid-Atlantic-based 2-year-old fillies Behrnik’s Bank, Cathryn Sophia, Eighth Wonder, and Lucy N Ethel put together powerful victories during a short period of time. Cathryn Sophia went on to take a pair of Grade 2s in Florida and is scheduled to run in Friday’s Kentucky Oaks. Lucy N Ethel later took down the Grade 3 Old Hat at Gulfstream Park.
Eighth Wonder, on the other hand, was given the winter off in South Carolina by trainer Dee Curry and owner-breeder Jeff Bowen. She will return to the races Saturday in the $100,000 Parx Oaks.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Spring is the season of rebirth, and never has that been more so for trainer Steve Asmussen.
His professional trials that began two years ago are well known – accusations by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, subsequent investigations by racing commissions in Kentucky and New York, removal from the ballot for the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame, and a call from the head of The Jockey Club to stay away from Churchill Downs the week of the 2014 Kentucky Derby and Oaks.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – No one will ever know how Songbird would have fared Friday in the Kentucky Oaks at Churchill Downs, although many fans will forever maintain that she was a shoo-in.
Alas, stuff happens in horse racing, and while Songbird resumed light training Sunday at Santa Anita for Jerry Hollendorfer after being sidelined for three weeks with a fever, some bettors who took a stand against her in the Kentucky Oaks Future Wager in March stand to benefit handsomely from her absence.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Trainer Cliff Sise Jr. isn’t quite sure which horses, if any, will push his first Kentucky Derby starter on the early pace. He only knows that Danzing Candy will be winging it from the get-go.
“It’s the only thing he knows how to do,” said Sise, the California-based veteran who was one of the last Derby arrivals here Monday.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Dennis Albaugh, whose family owns Brody’s Cause, has announced the winner’s share will be donated to the Des Moines Area Community College (DMACC) Foundation if the colt prevails Saturday in the 142nd running of the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs.
“This pledge combines two of my passions, DMACC and horse racing,” Albaugh, a 1972 DMACC graduate, said in a Tuesday media release. “It also offers another opportunity for me to share my successes with the college that started me on my career path many years ago.”
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Led by elite older females Curalina and Sheer Drama, 51 horses were entered in five supporting stakes on Friday’s Kentucky Oaks undercard at Churchill Downs.
Curalina and Sheer Drama, third and fourth, respectively, in the Breeders’ Cup Distaff last fall at Keeneland, meet for the first time since that race in the Grade 1, $300,000 La Troienne, the first stakes on Kentucky Oaks Day, going off as the sixth race at 1:26 p.m Eastern on a 13-race card that begins at 10:30 a.m.
