HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Claiming horses may be the focus of attention on opening day, but the popular Claiming Crown is only a prelude to what promises to be another star-studded winter season that begins Saturday at Gulfstream Park.
:: CLAIMING CROWN: Get PPs, watch Saturday's Gulfstream Park card live
STICKNEY, Ill. – La Tia this past Saturday became the second Illinois-bred to ship out of Hawthorne during the month of November and win a Grade 1 race in Southern California, joining Breeders’ Cup Sprint winner Work All Week on that unlikely pipeline when she captured the Matriarch Stakes at Del Mar.
While Work All Week has gone on to Florida for a bit of rest and relaxation, La Tia has shipped to trainer Armando de la Cerda’s barn at Fair Grounds in New Orleans, seemingly in good shape, de la Cerda said, after the first Grade 1 win of her career.
Wet conditions in Northern California delayed a scheduled workout for Shared Belief at Golden Gate Fields on Tuesday and Wednesday, but the weather has not affected trainer Jerry Hollendorfer’s plans in coming weeks for the champion 2-year-old male of 2013.
Hollendorfer said Wednesday that he intends to run Shared Belief in the $300,000 Malibu Stakes for 3-year-olds over seven furlongs at Santa Anita on Dec. 26. The Grade 1 Malibu is part of the opening day of the track’s winter-spring meeting.
“I think that’s what I’ll do right now,” Hollendorfer said.
The nine-month Mountaineer Racetrack season, which began March 1, concluded last Sunday with jockey Christian Pilares and trainer Bart Baird winning the most races in their respective categories.
Pilares won 182 races, unseating perennial local champion Deshawn Parker, who was second with 172 wins. Last year, Parker topped the standings, with Pilares 13 wins back in second.
It should be noted Parker started the meet two weeks late while riding at Sam Houston Race Park, where he was second in the standings. Parker also rode extensively at Presque Isle Downs this summer.
Few horses race through their 8-year-old seasons, especially when they start racing at age 2. Fewer still run for the same owner and trainer the entire time. Eighttofasttocatch has done both.
Eighttofasttocatch will make his 49th and final start Saturday at Laurel Park in the $100,000 Jennings Handicap, a Maryland-bred race he has won the past three years and will be favored to win again. A fifth-place finish or better will give him more than $1 million in earnings.
Gulfstream Park Winter (2014-15)
December 6 - March 28
Post Times
12:35 p.m. ET
Handicapping Information
Entries
Results
Track News
Winter Stakes Schedule
Gulfstream Park Track Layout
Any horseplayer knows how hard it is to grind out a profit on short-priced favorites. Your win percentage has to be astronomical for the few misses not to eat away the earnings from regular but limited hits.
So far at this Fair Grounds meet, the jockey-trainer combination of Tom Amoss and James Graham has buried that axiom.
Trainer Mark Casse won the Queen’s Plate Stakes at Woodbine this year with Lexie Lou, who was second to Kentucky Derby winner California Chrome in the Grade 1 Hollywood Derby at Del Mar last Saturday.
Casse may have a prospect for the 2015 Queen’s Plate in Conquest Typhoon, who won his second stakes in the Grade 3 Cecil B. DeMille at Del Mar on Sunday.
“He’s a Canadian-bred,” Casse said. “The Queen’s Plate is something to think about. For now, he’ll stay in California.”
Oscar Party and Yahilwa are likely to give trainer Jim Cassidy two chances for a win in Saturday’s $200,000 Bayakoa Stakes for fillies and mares at Los Alamitos.
On Tuesday, Cassidy said the two stakes winners are expected to run in the Grade 2 Bayakoa at 1 1/16 miles. Oscar Party and Yahilwa are owned by Deron Pearson and ran in stakes in their last starts.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Trainer Carlo Vaccarezza said he is considering sending Little Alexis back to Santa Anita to close out her 3-year-old campaign in the Grade 1 La Brea on Dec. 26. Little Alexis finished ninth in the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint, immediately after which she had a severe reaction at the site of an injection she’d received a day earlier to administer a vitamin jug.
Little Alexis worked for the first time since the Breeders’ Cup on Sunday at Gulfstream Park, going an easy three furlongs in 36.20 seconds.
