ELMONT, N.Y. – Orb will try to become the first Kentucky Derby winner to win the Jockey Club Gold Cup in the same year since Ponder did it in 1949 when he runs in Saturday’s 95th renewal of the $1 million race. Funny Cide and Affirmed are both Derby winners who won the Jockey Club Gold Cup as 4-year-olds.
Trainer Todd Pletcher has won two of the last three runnings of the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile with horses who had decidedly different campaigns.
In 2010, Uncle Mo went from a spectacular maiden win at Saratoga in August to a victory in the Grade 1 Champagne at Belmont Park in October to a dominant victory in the Juvenile at Churchill Downs in November.
In 2012, Shanghai Bobby got his campaign started in April and was a three-time graded stakes winner by the time he won the Juvenile by a head over He’s Had Enough at Santa Anita.
ELMONT, N.Y. – Hall of Fame trainer Bill Mott maintains that Royal Delta is at her best in the fall of the year. Given how well she ran the last two races of the summer, that’s a pretty scary proposition for those taking her on in Saturday’s Grade 1, $400,000 Beldame Invitational at Belmont Park.
ELMONT, N.Y. – The distance may not be ideal, but the competition could be just right for Baffle Me when she heads a field of six entered in Wednesday’s $100,000 Jazzy Stakes at Belmont Park.
After running into the Grade 1 winner Samitar in two of her last three starts, Baffle Me meets no such accomplished rival in the Jazzy, carded at seven furlongs over the Widener turf course. Baffle Me is one of two stakes winners in the field, the other being My Jopia, who won a New York Stallion Stakes race 13 months ago at Saratoga.
ARCADIA, Calif. – A $50,000 claimer as recently as April, the 4-year-old gelding You Know I Know makes his second consecutive start in a Grade 1 in Saturday’s $250,000 Awesome Again Stakes at Santa Anita. He deserves to be part of the field, in the mind of trainer John Sadler.
You Know I Know was third in the Grade 1 Pacific Classic at Del Mar on Aug. 25 and before that won an optional claimer over a mile on the synthetic track there Aug. 3.
“He ran two good races down there and he seems like a horse that is coming up a bit,” Sadler said Sunday.
Betfair Hollywood Park has released the stakes schedule for the track’s final season this fall, with few changes from recent years.
The meeting runs 29 racing days, from Nov. 7 through Dec. 22. The track will be permanently closed after the meeting, with the property scheduled to be developed for commercial and residential uses beginning in 2014.
The fall meeting has 21 stakes worth $4 million, compared to 18 stakes worth $3.8 million in 2012.
ETOBICOKE, Ontario – Suzanne Drake has paid her dues in the racing game, learning the ropes before launching her own training career in 1992 while also running her Silver Duck Racing Stable with her husband, Tim.
Last Saturday, Drake celebrated her first stakes win when Lapsang, a 2-year-old filly she owns in partnership with Janice and Joseph Pollard and Philip Yu, was up in time for a neck victory in the $114,800 Deputy Jane West Stakes.
ETOBICOKE, Ontario – A whopping 16 horses were entered in Wednesday’s Woodbine feature, a $52,500 allowance for Ontario-sired nonwinners of two races. Of the 14 who made it into the main body of the seven-furlong sprint, the most likely winners are Sparrowhawk and Denim Bay, who could vie for favoritism.
All-sources wagering on the live product was up 6.1 percent at the 60-day Assiniboia Downs meeting that ended Sunday, with the total increasing from $8.2 million last year to $8.7 million this year.
The daily average for this year was $145,000, compared with last year’s $138,962 for a 59-day meet. Assiniboia Downs, in a year-end press release, reported a 24.3 percent increase in wagering from outside the province but an ontrack decrease of 10.8 percent.
The average field size was 6.98, compared with 6.97 last year.
Count the Change figures to be a short price when she runs in a $25,000 optional claimer for fillies and mares Wednesday at Northlands Park. The one-mile race drew five horses and headlines an eight-race card that begins at 6 p.m. Mountain.
