ELMONT, N.Y. – Despite having had hard races in the Whitney and Woodward at Saratoga, Moreno remains revved up and raring to go for next Saturday’s Grade 1, $1 million Jockey Club Gold Cup, trainer Eric Guillot said Friday.
“My horse is good, I expect him to run big,” Guillot said from Saratoga, where Moreno has been training all summer. “He’s dappled out from head to toe. He’s ready to go.”
VANCOUVER, British Columbia – Alert Bay came out of his win in the Grade 3, $150,000 British Columbia Derby in excellent shape and will remain at Hastings to run in the Grade 3, $100,000 Premiers on Oct. 13, according to trainer Anita Bolton.
Alert Bay gave owner Peter Redekop his third straight win and his fourth overall in the most prestigious race at Hastings. Redekop was initially thinking of sending Alert Bay back to California, where he was based with trainer Blaine Wright.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia – Trainer Tracy McCarthy was still in recovery mode Wednesday morning after watching Ole’s Miss win the $100,000 British Columbia Oaks on Sunday. Ole’s Miss wrapped up the local 3-year-old filly title with her narrow win over Irish Lyric in the 1 1/8-mile Oaks. It was her fourth stakes win this year, and the combined margin of her four wins is less than three-quarters of a length. She won the Oaks by a head.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Alex Canchari, the leading rider at Hawthorne Racecourse on the Chicago circuit last fall, will ride in Southern California beginning next Friday.
Canchari, 20, arrived Thursday from Canterbury Park in Minnesota, where he has been riding this summer. Canchari has won 82 races this year, including stakes at Canterbury Park and Oaklawn Park.
The upcoming Santa Anita race meeting will be his first in California.
“I’ve been dreaming of this since I was a kid,” Canchari said. “People said I should try to move up to the next level.”
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Trainer Dallas Keen finally got his first Gulfstream Park victory when Katillac Charm drew off to a 2 3/4-length tally under jockey Juan Leyva in Thursday’s second race.
“It feels good; we had a lot of seconds and thirds,” said Keen, who has won more than 800 races in his career, most coming in Texas and around the Southwest. “I think the first horses we ran were too inflated for the racing here. I’ve brought some extra horses here for Midwest Thoroughbreds, and I’m getting them ready now, so we have a lot of high expectations for Florida.”
ARCADIA, Calif. – Santa Anita’s new racetrack has been well received by trainers since it was installed in late summer. The track has been used for training since early September and will be tested in racing for the first time Sept. 26 on the opening-day program.
“So far, so good,” said trainer Jim Cassidy, president of the California Thoroughbred Trainers Association. “I’ve worked 25, and they’ve come back good.”
Trainer Phil D’Amato described the surface as “very good.” He plans to enter possibly 15 horses for the first three days of the meeting, Sept. 26-28.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Trainer Marcus Vitali completed a big week when Midnight Cello splashed to an easy victory in a Thursday allowance race, defeating a stakes-quality group that included Palatine Hill and Sr. Quisqueyano. Five days earlier, Vitali sent out his Grade 1 winner Lochte to win The Vid Stakes.
Vitali also had won an allowance race with another of his graded stakes winners, Valid, the previous Thursday.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Shared Belief, considered the early favorite for the Breeders’ Cup Classic on Nov. 1, will be part of a small field for his Santa Anita debut in the $300,000 Awesome Again Stakes on Sept. 27.
The Grade 1 race will not include Clubhouse Ride, who won the Grade 2 Californian Stakes on May 31. Clubhouse Ride emerged from a seventh-place finish in the $200,000 Los Alamitos Mile on Sept. 6 with a back injury, trainer Craig Lewis said.
“He had a minor setback – a back issue,” Lewis said. “He’s turned out.”
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Hall of Fame rider Edgar Prado will return to south Florida and ride on a regular basis beginning Sunday. Prado is named on five mounts on Sunday’s Gulfstream program, including a pair for trainer Todd Pletcher, who last week shipped the first of his many horses expected here for the winter to Palm Beach Downs.
Bob Klesaris, the agent for both Prado and Jose Valdivia Jr. at Gulfstream, said Prado will ride full time at Gulfstream, with some weekend trips to New York and Kentucky.
Moonshine Mullin is through racing for the year and will return to action at Oaklawn Park next winter, said trainer Randy Morse.
Moonshine Mullin, owned by Randy Patterson, earned an expenses-paid berth to the Nov. 1 Breeders’ Cup Classic by winning the Grade 1 Stephen Foster here in June, but what Morse termed “a minor issue” precluded the 6-year-old horse from racing again in 2014.
