Sam Houston will put on four stakes Saturday night, led by the $100,000 Maxxam Gold Cup. The 1 1/8-mile race for older horses drew a group that includes Ride On Curlin, a past runner-up in the Preakness; and Mobile Bay, winner of last year’s Grade 2 Super Derby.
Also on the card, Cassatt, a graded stakes winner on dirt, has been entered in a turf stakes, the $50,000 Jersey Lilly at 1 1/16 miles. Trainer Larry Jones has given the mount to Florent Geroux.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – A few months ago, somebody at a dinner asked owner Ed Stanco if the morning after Princess of Sylmar won the 2013 Kentucky Oaks at Churchill Downs did he wake up and think, ‘My God, you won the Oaks?’ ”
“I said, ‘I got to tell you something,’ ” Stanco recalled Wednesday morning. “I wake up every morning three years later and say, ‘We won the Oaks.’ ”
Haveyougoneaway will be going for a sweep of Oaklawn’s stakes offerings for filly and mare sprinters in the $150,000 Carousel on April 14. She captured the second leg of the series last Saturday in the $100,000 Spring Fever, one race after taking last month’s $100,000 American Beauty.
Trainer Allen Milligan said on Tuesday that he likes the spacing of the six-furlong Carousel for Haveyougoneaway, who is owned by Champion Racing Stables.
“The more time between races the better,” Milligan said. “She’s not one of those fillies you’ve got to run every month.”
Sunland Park in New Mexico is scheduled to resume racing after a month’s absence Friday, but the status of its premier races, the Grade 3, $800,000 Sunland Park Derby and $200,000 Sunland Park Oaks, are pending. Both are “tentatively scheduled to run” March 20, according to a press release issued Tuesday night by Sunland. The track has not raced since Jan. 22 due to an outbreak of equine herpesvirus in which more than 72 horses were confirmed positive in New Mexico, most of them stabled at Sunland.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Cathryn Sophia will go postward the heavy favorite in Saturday’s Grade 2 Davona Dale, and she’ll do so with a new rider, Javier Castellano.
Joel Rosario rode Cathryn Sophia to her easy victory in the Grade 2 Forward Gal here last month and was scheduled to have the mount again in the one-mile Davona Dale. But trainer John Servis had to reach out for Castellano after Rosario suffered a broken right wrist as a result of a nasty spill in Saturday’s Melody of Colors Stakes.
HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – Conquest Windycity is a 3-year-old who wants 1 1/4 miles, according to trainer Mark Casse, and he will soon get a shot at one of the Kentucky Derby preps. Conquest Windycity has put himself under consideration for the Grade 2, $900,000 Rebel at his Oaklawn Park base by winning his first start of the year last Friday.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Dortmund, one of the top 3-year-olds of 2015, continues to struggle with foot issues that will postpone his 4-year-old debut.
Wednesday, trainer Bob Baffert said he is planning to give Dortmund a one-month rest, which would preclude the colt from starting until late spring or early summer.
“I’ll let his feet grow out,” Baffert said. “I was going to work him, but I’m not seeing what I want to see.”
Only a handful of challengers were entered on Wednesday to face Mohaymen on Saturday in the Grade 2, $400,000 Fountain of Youth Stakes at Gulfstream Park, and the field could be even smaller by race day, because trainer Stanley Gold was contemplating whether to run both Awesome Banner and Fellowship, or merely go with Fellowship and re-route Awesome Banner to the Tampa Bay Derby on March 12.
ARCADIA, Calif. – McHeat, who is scheduled to start in Saturday’s $100,000 Sensational Star Stakes for California-breds, has been the star of the Santa Anita winter-spring meeting for trainer Barry Abrams.
From 21 starts, Abrams has won two races, both by McHeat in early January. McHeat won an optional claimer against Cal-breds at a mile on turf at 11-1 on Jan. 1, and an optional claimer against open company at about 6 1/2 furlongs on the hillside turf course at 17-1 on Jan. 14.
