ARCADIA, Calif. – The perceived superiority of Songbird in the Grade 3 Santa Ysabel on Saturday at Santa Anita will push two good fillies into other races. Grade 1 winner Street Fancy will scratch; multiple statebred stakes winner Pacific Heat did not enter.
The reason is undefeated Songbird.
“If she runs, I’m not going to run,” said Phil D’Amato, Street Fancy’s trainer. “She’s going to run in the Fair Grounds Oaks [on March 26]. It’s a long, long stretch, similar to Los Alamitos.”
Sunday Rules, the California-bred speedball who knocked off males Jan. 30 in the California Cup Sprint, will seek her first graded stakes win at Keeneland. Trainer Phil D’Amato said Sunday Rules, a daughter of Tribal Rule, will target the Grade 1, seven-furlong Madison Stakes on April 9.
D’Amato plans to ship a small string to Keeneland this spring. The participants are to be determined.
Catch a Flight is on the comeback trail. Among the top handicap horses in California last season, when he won three graded stakes, Catch a Flight has resumed training with Richard Mandella and will target a spring-summer campaign.
“He just started galloping, and he looks great,” Mandella said. “He’ll gallop for another two weeks and then start to breeze. I wish I had him right now, but he had a hell of a good year, then he stiffened up. He needed a rest.”
NEW ORLEANS – Tom's Ready came out of the Risen Star Stakes in good shape, said trainer Dallas Stewart, who is looking past the colt's seventh-place finish and looking forward to the Louisiana Derby on March 26.
"That's where we're pointing,'' Stewart said, though he mentioned that other options, such as the Spiral Stakes at Turfway Park, the Arkansas Derby at Oaklawn Park, and the Blue Grass Stakes at Keeneland, are available.
In the Grade 2 Risen Star on Feb. 20, Tom's Ready had a wide trip and faded in the stretch. He finished 13 lengths behind the winner, Gun Runner.
NEW ORLEANS – The plan forged by veteran trainer Sturges Ducoing and longtime assistant Donald "Pa" Suberville for the gelding Hail to the Nile worked to perfection – and gave Ducoing his first stakes victory since 2012.
"He's a nice horse,'' Ducoing said. "We really thought he'd run good when we came in here. Pa said we'd run him short three times and win the Dixie Poker Ace.''
ARCADIA, Calif. – Santa Anita’s decision to replace its turf course in June, before the end of the spring-summer meeting, drew mixed reactions from a few leading trainers on Thursday.
Some are concerned about the potential for missed racing opportunities this summer, while others say a revamped turf course will be welcome before a Santa Anita autumn meeting highlighted by the Breeders’ Cup races on Nov. 4-5.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Two horses trained by Christophe Clement have been placed in quarantine at Belmont Park and are only allowed to go to the track after the general horse population has trained.
The horses – Width and Renwick – were based at Payson Park and left there by van Sunday, two days prior to the announcement that a case of equine herpesvirus had been discovered at Payson, prompting a 21-day quarantine there.
The horse who tested positive for equine herpesvirus at Payson is not trained by Clement.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Gotham Stakes contender Shagaf wasn’t the only promising 3-year-old whom trainer Chad Brown shipped back to New York from south Florida earlier this week.
Gift Box, who finished third in the Grade 2 Remsen here on Nov. 28, also returned to New York to continue training after suffering a couple of minor setbacks in south Florida. Gift Box worked twice at Palm Meadows but hasn’t worked since Jan. 25.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – The connections of King Kranz were prepared to run him back just one week after he finished last in the Grade 3 Withers Stakes on Jan. 30 at Aqueduct. As it turns out, King Kranz will have had five weeks between starts when he runs in Sunday’s $125,000 Jimmy Winkfield Stakes for 3-year-olds at six furlongs.
A field of seven was entered for the Winkfield, which will go as race 5 on Sunday’s nine-race program at Aqueduct.
A celebration of the life of longtime Maryland horsewoman Gretchen Mobberley will be held Monday at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Glenwood, Md. The noon service will be followed by a reception.
Mobberley, 84, died of cancer Feb. 21. She was preceded in death by her husband, Jack. Together, the Mobberleys developed more than 20 stakes winners at their Summer Hill Farm in Howard County, Md.
