OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Micromanage, who perhaps ran the best race of his career when he won the Queens County Stakes last month at Aqueduct, will run back in Monday’s $100,000 Jazil Stakes here, trainer Todd Pletcher said Wednesday.
Micromanage won three races from 11 starts in 2014, all at 1 1/16 miles or longer. He won the Birdstone Stakes at 1 3/4 miles at Saratoga and the Grade 3 Skip Away Stakes at 1 3/16 miles at Gulfstream. The Jazil will be run at a mile and 70 yards.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Willet, who has won four New York-bred stakes, will try to win her first open stakes race when she takes on six rivals in Saturday’s $100,000 Interborough Stakes at Aqueduct. Willet drew post 3 in a field of seven entered Wednesday.
Sam Houston Race Park opens Friday night with its biggest program of racing on the immediate horizon. The track will be hosting the Houston Ladies Classic on Jan. 24, with the $400,000 race for fillies and mares anchoring a card of four stakes that also includes the Grade 3, $200,000 Connally Turf Cup.
“We’re always excited this time of year,” said Andrea Young, president of the Houston track owned in partnership by Maxxam and Penn National Gaming.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Jockey Rajiv Maragh, who suffered a broken right arm when he was unseated from Wicked Strong during the running of the Jockey Club Gold Cup nearly four months ago, returns to the saddle Friday aboard the veteran turf specialist Sky Blazer in the afternoon’s featured ninth race.
Maragh spent almost three months in therapy rehabbing his arm before starting to get on horses again two weeks ago at Palm Meadows.
He reunites with Sky Blazer, whom he guided to a third-place finish in the Grade 2 Bowling Green Handicap early last summer at Belmont Park.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Jerome Stakes winner El Kabeir is expected to return to the work tab this weekend and most likely will run in the Grade 3, $250,000 Withers Stakes at Aqueduct on Feb. 7, trainer John Terranova said Wednesday.
“Nothing, I guess, is set in stone, but that’s what we’re pointing for right now,” he said. “Everything seems to be really good.”
Shared Belief, the champion 2-year-old male of 2013, worked five furlongs in 1:00.80 on Tuesday at Golden Gate Fields, moving closer to a highly anticipated showdown with California Chrome in the $500,000 San Antonio Stakes on Feb. 7.
Trained by Hollendorfer, Shared Belief worked in company and had the fastest of nine works at the distance.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Thegirlinthatsong, a 4-year-old filly trained by Jerry Hollendorfer, has enhanced her reputation as she moves farther west.
A stakes winner as a 2-year-old at Louisiana Downs in 2013, Thegirlinthatsong won a stakes for Texas-breds at Lone Star Park last May. In November, in her fourth start for Hollendorfer, Thegirlinthatsong was second in the richest race of her career, the $309,000 Zia Park Oaks in New Mexico.
On Saturday, Thegirlinthatsong can win her first graded stakes in the $200,000 La Canada Stakes for 4-year-old fillies at Santa Anita.
Having just started Dec. 28, War Story will race Saturday in the Grade 3, $200,000 Lecomte Stakes on less than three weeks’ rest. Faced with the choice of running or waiting for the Feb. 21 Risen Star, trainer Tom Amoss and principal owner Ron Paolucci decided to race.
“Look, the options were to run here or wait for the Risen Star, and we decided this was the better choice,” Amoss said.
ARCADIA, Calif. – This weekend, jockey Drayden Van Dyke will have near-constant reminders of the changes and milestones in his brief riding career.
In Thursday’s eighth race at Santa Anita, Van Dyke rides Unusually Big in an otherwise nondescript maiden-claiming race. It will be his final mount as an apprentice jockey.
Friday, Van Dyke will be on a plane to South Florida where he is widely expected to receive the Eclipse Award as the nation’s outstanding apprentice jockey of 2014 on Saturday evening.
