OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Due to inclement weather that will likely impact turf racing Sunday at Aqueduct, the New York Racing Association has postponed two turf stakes scheduled for Sunday and will run them next week.
The $125,000 Glen Cove Stakes, for 3-year-old fillies scheduled for six furlongs, has been pushed to Thursday. It will be open to original nominees and supplements and be drawn Saturday.
Juan Hernandez, the leading rider at the current Santa Anita autumn meeting, has been given a three-day suspension from Oct. 20-22 by Santa Anita stewards for careless riding in the Grade 3 Zuma Beach Stakes last Sunday.
Hernandez was cited for altering course without sufficient clearance in the stretch of the one-mile turf race for 2-year-olds. Endlessly won by 2 1/4 lengths, but Formidable Man, who finished sixth, was forced to alter course when Endlessly moved out in the stretch.
Bill McLean was forewarned.
After he claimed Morning Addiction for $10,000 at Del Mar on Sept. 1, McLean was warned by fellow trainer Quinn Howey that the 6-year-old mare had a few quirky habits.
McLean, and everyone watching Golden Gate Fields on Sept. 30, saw the oddities themselves when Morning Addiction won a $12,500 claimer at 5 1/2 furlongs.
Jockey Julien Leparoux, an Eclipse Award-winning rider nearing 3,000 career wins in North America, will be based at Oaklawn Park for the first time this winter, agent Jose Santos Jr. said Wednesday.
Leparoux is currently riding at Keeneland. He will head to Arkansas following the upcoming Churchill Downs meet. Santos said Leparoux is scheduled to begin working horses at Oaklawn the first week in December. The meet opens Dec. 8.
Leparoux in the past has wintered at Gulfstream Park.
Trainer Dan Blacker faces a possible fine or suspension after failing to complete pre-workout veterinary exams for runners in his stable on more than 500 occasions in an 18-month period ending on July 1, according to a complaint on the California Horse Racing Board’s website.
A hearing in the case was scheduled for Friday, but has been postponed, according to steward Kim Sawyer. Blacker did not return a message on Wednesday regarding the case.
David Bernstein recently retired from training in California after selling his last active runner, a situation he hopes is only temporary.
Bernstein, 83, had his last runner in March with Hoop Dream, who finished second in a $4,000 claimer at Golden Gate Fields. Hoop Dream was recently sold, Bernstein said.
“I ran out of horses,” Bernstein said on Wednesday from his home in Rancho Cucamonga. “We sold our last horse and that was it.”
(This story was originally published in 2017 and has been updated)
COUNT FLEET
1944 C. HEWITT
“THE CHAMP”.
The simple words were scratched into wet cement more than three-quarters of a century ago.
In a corner of a long neglected and dimly-lit Belmont feed room, the words barely discernible a few years back have since disappeared beneath a layer of mud. A leaky nearby washer and still-used hose occasionally wet them; people working there walk on them.
No one – even those still stabled in the old barn – notice them.
Drew’s Gold, a two-time listed stakes winner and runner-up in the Grade 1 Woody Stephens, has been purchased privately by Sheikh Rashid Bin Humaid Alnuami’s RRR Racing from James Chapman and co-owner Stuart Tsujimoto.
Drew’s Gold has been turned over to trainer Chad Summers with the goal of getting to the Dubai Golden Shaheen next March.
In the summer, RRR Racing purchased Clapton and, after a fourth in the Jockey Club Gold Cup, he won the Grade 2 Lukas Classic.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Book’em Danno, dominant winner of Sunday’s off-the-turf Futurity Stakes at Aqueduct, will likely have one more start this year but where and on what surface is yet to be determined.
The Futurity, when scheduled for six furlongs on turf, was billed as a Breeders’ Cup Challenge race, meaning the winner got a fees-paid berth into the Juvenile Turf Sprint plus a $10,000 travel stipend. This year’s Breeders’ Cup will be held at Santa Anita on Nov. 3-4.
The 4-year-old colt Smile Happy, who ran one of the fastest races this year winning the Alysheba Stakes in May, has been getting his mind right at trainer Kenny McPeek’s farm in Florida in preparation for a 2024 campaign.
Smile Happy didn’t race for 10 months after finishing eighth in the 2022 Kentucky Derby. The Alysheba, on May 5, was his third start following the long break and in it Smile Happy made manifest the vast unexpressed reserve of talent he’d hinted at throughout his career, winning by two lengths with an elite 110 Beyer Speed Figure.
