HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Following a two-month hiatus, racing returns Saturday to Gulfstream Park with the opening of the 2014-15 championship meeting, which runs through March 29.

It has been decades since trainer Tom Swearingen sent a string to Oaklawn Park, but Swearingen will have a dozen horses stabled there this winter, including the very talented Illinois-bred 3-year-old I Got It All. But before shipping out of Chicago, I Got It All starts Saturday at Hawthorne in the Lightning Jet Handicap for Illinois-breds, a six-furlong dash with an estimated $75,000 purse.

Mister Marti Gras turns 8 in less than a month, but the gelding is not showing his age. Mister Marti Gras ran his typical graded stakes-caliber race last weekend at Hawthorne, finishing second in the Grade 2, $250,000 Gold Cup for the second year in a row.

With better luck, Mister Marti Gras – fourth in the 2011 and 2012 Gold Cup – might have won this race, but he had a poor outside draw and rallied from the back of the field and wide over an inside-speed-favoring surface that helped propel Red Rifle to victory.

Since mid-April, the 4-year-old filly Legacy has run in six consecutive stakes with mixed results.

She won the Cypress Stakes at Los Alamitos in July and was second in the Las Madrinas Stakes there in September. In between those races, she finished sixth in the Tranquility Lake Stakes on Polytrack at Del Mar in August and was most recently eighth in the Grade 2 Goldikova Stakes on turf at Santa Anita on Nov. 2.

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

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