For weeks, Saturday’s maiden race for 2-year-olds at a mile on turf at Del Mar has been a goal with the expensive yearling purchase Brummell.
The surface and distance are a better fit for Brummell than a main track sprint, trainer Michael McCarthy said on Thursday.
“He’s a nice, big beautiful horse,” McCarthy said. “He has kind of a high cruising speed more than a turn of foot. I didn’t think running him 5 1/2 furlongs on dirt would do him much good.
There are several favorable attributes regarding the debut of the 2-year-old filly McKechnie in a maiden race at 5 1/2 furlongs at Del Mar on Saturday.
McKechnie is by top stallion Into Mischief and is the first foal to race out of Mother Mother, a debut winner at Del Mar as a 2-year-old in 2018 who later won minor stakes at Churchill Downs and Santa Anita. Mother Mother was purchased in November 2020 for $1.8 million after her final start.
Jockey Antonio Fresu plans to seek court action this week allowing him to appeal a five-day suspension for causing interference in the 11th race at Del Mar on July 20, according to the rider’s attorney, Bing Bush.
Fresu was cited by stewards Grant Baker, Luis Jauregui, and Kim Sawyer for failing to maintain a straight course aboard The Old Nine in a maiden race at a mile on turf. The Old Nine was judged to have caused a chain reaction of interference that caused the fall of Fausto in the stretch.
Fausto and jockey Edwin Maldonado were not injured in the incident.
Whether his rival was Flavien Prat in 2020 or 2021, or Juan Hernandez the last two years, there has always been at least one rider keeping jockey Umberto Rispoli from winning the riding title at the Del Mar summer meeting.
This year, at least through the first two days of the 31-day season, Rispoli is atop the standings. Last Saturday and Sunday, Rispoli led all riders at the top-class meeting with five wins, including victories in stakes aboard Formidable Man in the Oceanside Stakes on Saturday, and Ag Bullet in Sunday’s Osunitas Stakes.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – The trio of horses trainer Brad Cox ran at Monmouth Park last Saturday all shipped up to Saratoga the following day and are targeting stakes here in late August.
The reigning champion older dirt filly Idiomatic, who won a dogged stretch duel with Soul of an Angel to win the Grade 3 Molly Pitcher by a head, will be aimed at the Grade 1 Personal Ensign on Aug. 23. Her four-length victory in last year’s Personal Ensign was the first of three straight Grade 1 victories that helped clinch her an Eclipse Award.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Trainer Chad Brown was looking for a confidence booster for his Grade 1-placed filly Occult and trainer Wesley Ward was hoping to get his Grade 1-winning mare Chi Town Lady back on track when both trainers entered the pair in Friday’s fourth race. Instead, they wound up hooking one another in the one-mile contest that also lured the multiple stakes-placed Movie Moxy and four-time stakes winner Stonewall Star.
Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs, Ark., announced Tuesday the purse of the Southwest Stakes has been boosted from $800,000 to $1 million in a move that makes the track’s three major Kentucky Derby points races each worth seven figures.
In total, the Oaklawn meet will have a stakes schedule of 47 races worth a total of $16.2 million when it opens Dec. 6.
DEL MAR, Calif. – All-sources handle fell 4 percent on the first two days of the Del Mar summer meeting on Saturday and Sunday compared to similar days at the 2023 meeting, according to data released by the track.
The 2023 meeting began on a Friday, but this year the season started on Saturday.
Handle on Saturday and Sunday, including ontrack, simulcasting, and account-wagering sources, reached $41.9 million. The corresponding days last year had handle of $43.6 million.
The five-time stakes winner Chancery Way will be sent from Northern California to Del Mar next month in search of an elusive goal – a stakes win at a mile.
Chancery Way has developed a niche in minor stakes or California-bred stakes in the last two years, winning five sprints at Del Mar, Golden Gate Fields, Pleasanton, and Sacramento.
The most recent of those was a commanding 3 1/2-length win in the $66,250 Governor’s Cup Stakes for fillies and mares at six furlongs at Cal-Expo in Sacramento on Saturday evening, a win that ended a three-race losing streak.
