ARCADIA, Calif. – Fire With Fire’s win in Saturday’s Grade 2 Charles Whittingham Stakes at Santa Anita has made the 6-year-old the clear leader in the California marathon turf division.
While the division does not feature a strong roster, Fire With Fire is clearly in the best season of his career – and at a perfect time for Neil Drysdale.
Fort Erie Race Track will begin its 117th season of live racing Tuesday afternoon, kicking off a 37-day meet that runs through Sept. 30.
While the track has been fighting for survival the past few years, the mood is much different ahead of this season after Fort Erie reached a three-year deal with the Ontario government this winter for racing dates.
ARCADIA, Calif. - The main track at Santa Anita will be renovated in summer, several months before the track hosts the Breeders’ Cup races for the third consecutive year on Oct. 31 and Nov. 1.
The track made the announcement in a statement released on Friday.
In early July, following the closure of the barn area for a six-week period coinciding with the Del Mar summer meeting, the existing surface will be replaced with a locally based soil, known as El Segundo sand, according to track superintendent Dennis Moore.
Del Mar is expanding its purse incentive program for out-of-state horses at its upcoming summer meeting to include horses who start in the final three weeks of the current Santa Anita spring-summer meeting or the two-week meeting at Los Alamitos in early July.
During the Del Mar meeting, all runners who have not started in California in 2014 (not including first-time starters) will receive a $1,000 appearance fee. In addition, such horses who earn purse money in overnight races at Del Mar will receive a 33 percent bonus.
ARCADIA, Calif. - Big Macher, the winner of two sprint stakes this year, has resumed training after being vanned of following a workout May 10, trainer Richard Baltas said.
Baltas said the 4-year-old Big Macher has a blind quarter crack – a hoof crack that can’t yet be seen – and that the gelding is only jogging. Big Macher has been fitted with a Z-bar shoe that takes pressure off the tender part of the foot, Baltas said.
Baltas said Big Macher is unlikely to resume racing until the Del Mar summer meeting, which runs July 17 to Sept. 3.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Amazombie, the champion sprinter of 2011, has been retired.
Trainer Bill Spawr said Thursday that the 8-year-old Amazombie was scheduled to leave his stable at Santa Anita on Friday for a local farm, and that a yearlong attempt at a comeback had been abandoned.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia – If hard work is one of the ingredients to success, then apprentice Corrine Andros is on her way to a solid career as a jockey. She also displayed burgeoning talent when she won four races at Hastings last Saturday.
It is difficult to track down Andros in the morning because she’s one of the hardest-working jockeys at Hastings and is usually exercising or working a horse. She wouldn’t have it any other way.
“This isn’t work,” Andros said. “I go a bit crazy if I’m not on a horse.”
AUBURN, Wash. – Trainer Doris Harwood will send out a powerful one-two punch Sunday when she starts Del Rio Harbor and Noosito as leading contenders in the $50,000 Auburn Handicap at Emerald Downs. The meeting’s first stakes for 3-year-olds highlights a nine-race card beginning at 2 p.m. Pacific.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Kentucky Oaks winner Untapable will not race in the Acorn Stakes on the huge Belmont Stakes undercard June 7 and will wait instead for the next Grade 1 race at Belmont Park in the 3-year-old filly division, the Mother Goose Stakes on June 28, trainer Steve Asmussen confirmed Friday.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – An equine tragedy struck Churchill even before the nine-race program began Thursday when a 5-year-old mare named Never Tell Lynda died in a freak accident on the racetrack while being walked to the paddock for a schooling session prior to the first race.
According to trainer Kenny Wirth, the mare suddenly spooked from a loud sound coming from an infield speaker, reared up, and landed on her head, crushing her skull. The mare was euthanized immediately after veterinarians arrived on the scene shortly thereafter.
