ELMONT, N.Y. – The champion and three-time Grade 1 winner My Miss Aurelia took another step toward a return to racing with a sharp five-furlong, in-company work Monday over the Belmont Park training track.
Working with the unstarted 2-year-old filly Flatbow, My Miss Aurelia went in 1:00.78, with her final three furlongs in 35.90 seconds. She galloped out six furlongs in 1:14.33. It was her first five-eighths breeze since being sent to Pletcher last month at Saratoga.
ELMONT, N.Y. – Two-year-olds will be showcased in the Grade 1 Champagne on Oct. 5, and on Monday, two of the top contenders for that race put in workouts.
ELMONT, N.Y. – It seems like a race did The Lumber Guy a world of good.
Last year’s Vosburgh winner worked a very fast half-mile in 46.14 seconds Monday in preparation for Saturday’s Grade 1, $400,000 Vosburgh Invitational. Mike Luzzi was aboard for the move and will be aboard Saturday, replacing John Velazquez, who is committed to ride Justin Phillip. Luzzi rode The Lumber Guy to victory in last year’s Grade 2 Jerome.
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.
