Endlessly started on a synthetic track for the first time when he won the third stakes of his brief career in the $101,350 El Camino Real Derby at Golden Gate Fields on Saturday.
The victory did not change trainer Michael McCarthy’s outlook for the colt’s spring campaign.
“We know he’s a top talent on the turf,” McCarthy said Sunday. “He showed his versatility on the synthetic. We’ll keep him on the turf for now.”
White Abarrio was pronounced ready for the $20 million Saudi Cup in Saudi Arabia on Feb. 24 by exercise rider Emily Ellingwood after working a half-mile in 47.40 seconds at Santa Anita on Monday.
White Abarrio “was eager to do more,” according to Ellingwood.
Most of trainer Neil Pessin’s 22-horse stable went up for sale when the late owner-breeder Bob Lothenbach’s racing and breeding stock was dispersed at the Lothenbach horses of racing age dispersal on Fasig-Tipton Digital in late January. While Pessin is down to nine horses, three are running on the Saturday card at Fair Grounds, including Happy American, one of several horses with a decent chance in the Grade 3, $250,000 Mineshaft Stakes.
Pessin himself paid $340,000 to acquire Happy American, a 6-year-old gelding with more than $600,000 in career earnings.
Trainer Brendan Walsh won his first classic race when Pretty Mischievous captured the Kentucky Oaks last year, and when the filly Intricate launches her 3-year-old campaign Saturday at Fair Grounds, Walsh has good reason to hope she, too, can take him to the Oaks.
Two of the eight runners in Saturday’s $100,000 El Camino Real Derby at Golden Gate Fields are three-time winners.
First, there is Endlessly, the winner of two Grade 3 stakes on turf in Southern California last fall who will be a heavy favorite. A Kentucky-bred colt by Oscar Performance, Endlessly has earned $239,200 for owners and breeders John and Jerry Amerman.
Then there is Old Triangle, a California-bred gelding by the City Zip stallion Gig Harbor who races for owner and breeder Francis O’Leary and trainer Tim Bellasis. He has earned $39,390 in six starts.
Jockey Kylee Jordan will be sidelined through at least next Friday as she awaits more diagnostics on a shoulder she injured during a Feb. 2 race at Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs, Ark.
Jordan dislocated her shoulder during the running of the fourth race, which she won aboard Sweet Mother Mary ($32.80). Following the race, family members took her to the emergency room. She was released that night, and is awaiting an MRI, agent Bobby Dean said Friday.
“She is feeling better,” he said. “We need to get an MRI before we go forward.”
Jack Steiner, one of the leading trainers in Northern California in recent years, is relocating to Santa Anita later this month.
Steiner said on Wednesday that he plans to bring a 10-horse team to Southern California, having reduced his stable from 40 since last fall. He currently has 17 horses in his care at Golden Gate Fields. Some of those horses will be sent to other trainers at Golden Gate Fields, while others will be shipped to Turf Paradise in Arizona, he said.
Led by the two-time Grade 3 winner Endlessly, Saturday’s $100,000 El Camino Real Derby at Golden Gate Fields is expected to have a small field.
This is the last running of the El Camino Real Derby before the track’s scheduled closure in June, and the second-to-last scheduled stakes. The Grade 3 San Francisco Mile, run on turf with a purse of $175,000, is April 27. The track’s final day is June 9.
Jerry Antonucci, a public handicapper for Los Angeles-area newspaper for nearly four decades, died on Tuesday of cancer, his friends said.
Antonucci was 77.
From 1973 until his retirement in 2010, Antonucci was a fixture on the front row of press boxes at Fairplex Park, Hollywood Park, and Santa Anita.
Antonucci did selections and wrote articles for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner from 1973 until that paper folded in the autumn of 1989. Antonucci moved to the Orange County Register shortly thereafter and remained with the paper until his retirement.
