Frank Mirahmadi will call the races at Santa Anita on Thursday, replacing a vacationing Trevor Denman.
Last weekend, Mirahmadi described his two-week position as Denman’s replacement “is the ultimate for me.”
“Trevor is my idol,” he said. “I learned everything from him. He’s helped me so much in my career. He’s given me so much advice.”
Milestones were reached recently at Golden Gate Fields, which concludes its winter-spring meeting this week.
Last Friday, jockey Frank Alvarado scored the 3,000th victory of his career as well as numbers 3,001 and 3,002 before being shaken up in a spill Saturday. Also on Saturday, Halo Dolly became a millionaire.
ELMONT, N.Y. – Had California Chrome finished off a Triple Crown sweep with a victory in the Belmont Stakes on Saturday, he would have had the male 3-year-old championship locked up, and very likely Horse of the Year, too, even with more than six months to go in the calendar year.
Instead, both categories are still in play after California Chrome finished in a dead heat for fourth in the Belmont.
ETOBICOKE, Ontario – Paladin Bay, the likely favorite for this Sunday’s $500,000 Woodbine Oaks, recorded her final work for the race on the main track here Sunday, breezing five furlongs in 1:02.00 with jockey Gerry Olguin in the irons.
“She did it easy,” said trainer Harold Ladouceur. “She galloped out really well, too. That’s what I was looking for.”
Trainer Roger Attfield has three fillies on target for the Oaks – Llanarmon, Unspurned, and Storm Now – who all worked six furlongs Friday.
ETOBICOKE, Ontario – While his 50th birthday didn’t start off exactly how he had envisioned, trainer Mike De Paulo recorded his 50th career stakes win when Pender Harbour recovered from a slow start in Sunday’s $125,000 Steady Growth Stakes.
“We had started off with a bad day when Justin fell off,” De Paulo said. “But then Pender came through. He was something else.”
ETOBICOKE, Ontario – On Rainbow Bridge captured her third career stakes victory in Saturday’s $125,000 Lady Angela Stakes with a rail-skimming trip under jockey Skye Chernetz.
“She had a perfect trip,” said winning trainer Dave Cotey. “It got a little tight, and Skye had to move a little quicker than she wanted to, but it went perfect.”
On Rainbow Bridge was making her first start since September in the Lady Angela, but fitness wasn’t Cotey’s biggest concern coming into the race.
ELMONT, N.Y. – Trainer Linda Rice had a successful weekend, winning Friday’s Grade 2 True North with Palace and Saturday’s $150,000 Easy Goer Stakes with Kid Cruz. Both horses likely will be pointed to races on the July 5 Stars and Stripes card at Belmont.
Palace is being pointed to the $400,000 Belmont Sprint Championship Invitational (formerly the James Marvin, run at Saratoga), and Kid Cruz is a candidate for the Grade 3, $200,000 Dwyer Stakes.
ELMONT, N.Y. – Sweet Reason, the half-length winner of Saturday’s Grade 1 Acorn, most likely will make her next start in the Grade 1, $500,000 Test Stakes at Saratoga on Aug. 2, trainer Leah Gyarmati said Sunday.
The Test is run at seven furlongs. Last year at 2, Sweet Reason won the Grade 1 Spinaway, also a seven-furlong race. The last filly to win both races was Numbered Account (1971-72).
The Test comes eight weeks after the Acorn. Sweet Reason, owing to some internal issues, had nine weeks between her third-place finish in the Gazelle and the Acorn.
ELMONT, N.Y. – After Palace Malice won the Belmont Stakes last year, he went to Saratoga and ran twice, winning the Jim Dandy Stakes and finishing a troubled fourth, beaten less than a length, in the Travers Stakes.
After winning the Grade 1 Met Mile on Saturday for his fourth victory in as many starts this year, Palace Malice will again be pointed to Saratoga, where he will run next in the $1.5 million Whitney Invitational on Aug. 2.
ELMONT, N.Y. – Close Hatches and Princess of Sylmar, separated by a head in Saturday’s Grade 1 Ogden Phipps Stakes at Belmont Park, most likely will meet again in the Grade 1 Personal Ensign at Saratoga on Aug. 22, but how each filly gets to that race remains in question.
