MIAMI – The Gulfstream Park championship meet does not begin until Dec. 5, but the influx of Northern-based horsemen to south Florida is well underway. Saturday’s pair of Grade 3 handicaps at Gulfstream Park West, the My Charmer and Tropical Turf, perfectly illustrates that point.
DEL MAR, Calif. – Toews On Ice, who scored his third straight stakes win in the Grade 3 Bob Hope last Saturday, likely will get a chance to stretch out in the Grade 1 Los Alamitos Futurity for 2-year-olds on Dec. 19, trainer Bob Baffert said Wednesday.
Toews On Ice has raced five times, all in sprints. After losing his first two starts, he has won three straight.
“If he looks good, I’ll run him back in the Futurity,” Baffert said. “Might as well find out if he can go long for $350,000.”
The Maryland Racing Commission on Tuesday approved 164 racing days in the state for 2016 and the stakes schedule for the Laurel Park winter meet.
With the exception of a break from Feb. 16 to March 10, racing will be conducted year-round. There will be 129 days of racing at Laurel Park, a 28-day meet at Pimlico Race Course, and seven days of racing at Timonium.
The winter break at Laurel meshes well with the schedule at Parx Racing in Pennsylvania. Parx will be closed Dec. 23 through Feb. 13, when Laurel will be running. Parx will then reopen when Laurel takes its break.
The Penn National Gaming tracks of Penn National, Mahoning Valley Race Course, and Zia Park will run 11 stakes worth more than $1.6 million during Thanksgiving week.
On Monday, Mahoning Valley Race Course will hold the $200,000 Steel Valley Sprint, a six-furlong race for 3-year-olds. The card also will include the $75,000 Hollywood Gaming Mahoning Distaff.
The Frank J. De Francis Memorial Dash was run last weekend at Laurel Park with a $350,000 purse for the fourth straight year but still is waiting to be recognized by the American Graded Stakes Committee. Surely, it will make the grade next year.
Kiss Moon was assigned post 12 as the 120-pound highweight in a field of 13 fillies and mares entered in the Grade 3, $100,000 Cardinal Handicap, to be run Saturday as the lone graded stakes of the weekend at Churchill Downs.
Julien Leparoux has the call on Kiss Moon, a two-back winner of the Kentucky Downs Ladies Turf for owner and breeder Carl Pollard and trainer Dave Vance. Kiss Moon will spot the opposition two to nine pounds in what shapes up as a wide-open 42nd running of the Cardinal, a 1 1/8-mile turf race carded as the 10th of 11 Saturday races.
Eighth Wonder has faced relatively modest competition so far, but on Sunday, she kept her record perfect with a ridiculously easy win in the restricted Donna Freyer Stakes at Parx Racing.
Eighth Wonder, a 2-year-old daughter of Pioneerof the Nile, is now 3 for 3 with earnings of $126,000. She has won a maiden race, an allowance, and the 6 1/2-furlong Freyer, all at Parx. Nobody has gotten closer than five lengths to her, and her average winning margin is more than seven lengths.
DEL MAR, Calif. – Beholder, scratched from the Breeders’ Cup Classic two days before the race when she bled following a gallop at Keeneland, is getting some downtime away from the track and is not expected to rejoin trainer Richard Mandella’s barn at Santa Anita until early January.
Mandella said Beholder has been turned out at a local layup facility run by Julie Adair-Stack, where Beholder has spent time after prior setbacks.
DEL MAR, Calif. – Lucky Folie, who won the Desi Arnaz Stakes for 2-year-old fillies last Sunday, could come back in the Grade 1 Starlet Stakes at Los Alamitos on Dec. 12 or simply await the Santa Anita winter meeting, according to trainer Richard Mandella.
“We’ll have to think about it,” Mandella said. “We could give her a chance in that race, but there are a lot of nice races at Santa Anita.”
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Horse trainers are forever taking stock. It’s a professional prerequisite given the transitive nature of the job.
Steve Asmussen, as much as anyone, lives in a perpetual state of analysis, primarily as it relates to how his horses are doing and what they’ll be doing next. But on the occasion of his 50th birthday Wednesday, just moments after dropping off his three sons at school in their suburban Dallas neighborhood, Asmussen was asked by phone to stop for a moment and take stock of his own life.
“I’ve been amazingly blessed,” he said.
