ARCADIA, Calif. – The march toward the final act of American Pharoah’s racing career began on Monday morning here at Santa Anita, where he had his first work since the Travers Stakes 23 days earlier and his first work in preparation for the Breeders’ Cup Classic 40 days hence.
ETOBICOKE, Ontario – Lexie Lou, the 2014 Canadian Horse of the Year, will not run again in 2015, trainer Mark Casse said.
Lexie Lou was scheduled to make her first start since January in an allowance race Aug. 26 at Woodbine as a prep for the Grade 2 Canadian Stakes on Sept. 13. Instead, she was scratched from that allowance after experiencing swelling in one of her eyes.
“She won’t run this year,” Casse said. “Lexie is back in Ocala. Her eye just did not respond as quickly as we would have liked. She’s doing better, and we’re just going to wait and see.”
Frosted and I’m a Chatterbox punched their tickets to the Breeders’ Cup on Saturday with their respective wins in the Pennsylvania Derby and Cotillion, the $1 million brother-sister races for 3-year-olds that highlight the season at Parx Racing.
Frosted was returning on three weeks’ rest following his courageous third-place finish in the Travers at Saratoga, a race in which he hooked American Pharoah on the lead for approximately five-sixteenths of a mile before flattening out late. He scored a relatively easy two-length victory in the 1 1/8-mile Pa. Derby under Joel Rosario.
Sheer Drama, the likely Breeders’ Cup Distaff favorite if Beholder runs in the BC Classic as planned, worked Sunday morning at Gulfstream Park. The five-furlong workout was the first for Sheer Drama since she won the Grade 1 Personal Ensign on Aug. 29 at Saratoga.
“I thought she went excellent,” trainer David Fawkes said by phone from Gulfstream. “As far as I know, the track was a little dead. I still got her in 1:01 and change, well within herself. She just did everything perfect.”
LOS ALAMITOS, Calif. – One day after Flavien Prat sustained five fractured vertebrae and a punctured lung in a spill at Los Alamitos, the 23-year-old jockey received good news Friday from his neurosurgeon. Prat will not require surgery for the fractures, four of which are minor and another that is more significant.
Prat’s neurosurgeon Dr. Asadeh Farin made the diagnosis after tests Friday at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center, where Prat remains in the intensive care unit.
Florent Geroux was named to ride Saturday at Parx and therefore missed the last program of the five-day Kentucky Downs meet, but what the 29-year-old Frenchman accomplished at the south-central Kentucky track this month was nothing short of remarkable.
Geroux rode 12 winners from 28 starters for mount earnings of nearly $1.2 million in continuing his steady rise into the elite ranks of North American jockeys. He ties Rafael Bejarano (12 for 35 in 2004) for most wins at a Kentucky Downs meet while easily setting the earnings record.
Work All Week breezed a half-mile in 48 seconds Friday morning at Churchill in preparation for the Phoenix Stakes on opening day (Oct. 2) of the Keeneland fall meet. Sal Gonzalez Jr. was aboard the 6-year-old Work All Week for Midwest Thoroughbreds and trainer Roger Brueggemann.
Another Midwest homebred, Arlington Million winner The Pizza Man, was scheduled for a serious breeze Saturday in preparation for the Oct. 3 Shadwell Turf Mile at Keeneland.
Melancon now Borel’s agent
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – While Churchill Downs would love to have American Pharoah in the lineup for the Lukas Classic, the more realistic view is that the 1 1/8-mile race will draw a field with a little less panache.
American Pharoah is among the 32 nominees to the Lukas Classic, one of three stakes to be run here next Saturday (Sept. 26), but the nomination by trainer Bob Baffert appears to be a provisional one. Instead, the likely favorite could be Golden Lad, a winner of three stakes this year, all for Todd Pletcher.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Beholder looked super working six furlongs Friday morning at Santa Anita under jockey Gary Stevens, her final workout before the Grade 1 Zenyatta Stakes on Sept. 26.
It was 6:45 a.m. when Beholder broke off at the five-eighths pole, five lengths behind an unidentified workmate. She cruised past in the lane, “won” the work by more than three lengths, and worked to the seven-eighths pole. Trainer Richard Mandella timed her six furlongs in 1:12.60; track clockers gave her 1:12.80.
Jockey Flavien Prat sustained five fractured vertebrae and a punctured lung in a spill Thursday at Los Alamitos, according to his agent, Derek Lawson.
Lawson said Prat has movement in his extremities and was resting comfortably under sedation in the intensive care unit at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center on Friday morning.
Prat had a chest tube inserted and underwent a CAT scan on Thursday, and doctors have scheduled an MRI for him on Friday. Lawson said that Prat fractured the T-4 through T-8 vertebrae.
