Closing Remarks had the best season of her career in 2023, winning four graded turf stakes at Del Mar and Santa Anita.
The 5-year-old mare’s career is not done.
Trainer Carla Gaines said on Friday that Closing Remarks will remain in training next year at the insistence of owner and breeder John Haris.
“He’s very much a racing fan,” Gaines said. “He wants to continue running her.”
Closing Remarks has won 7 of 25 starts and earned $999,820. In 2023, she won 4 of 10 starts and earned $601,000.
New York-based trainer David Jacobson swept into Oaklawn Park on opening weekend and won with his first two starters on the first card of the meet Dec. 8. He’ll attempt to keep his momentum going Sunday with Kingdom.
Kingdom will represent the barn in the fifth race, a $50,000 starter allowance for 3-year-olds and up over six furlongs. He enters off a third-place finish in a Dec. 1 starter allowance at Aqueduct.
“I like the race for him,” Jacobson said. “I like that there appears to be very little speed, which he’s full of.”
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Jockey Manny Franco, who will end 2023 as the leading jockey on the New York Racing Association circuit in wins, will begin 2024 on the sidelines, serving a three-day careless riding suspension handed him by the stewards.
Franco, who waived his right of appeal, will serve the days on Jan. 1, 4, and 5 for his ride on Rollin in Dough, who won the sixth race on Dec. 9 at Aqueduct. Rollin in Dough lugged in during the stretch run, causing Romero Maragh to steady slightly aboard The Mighty Don, who ultimately finished last.
HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – Lone Rock, the top-class marathon runner who was retired over the summer, is on a waiting list to join his fellow retirees at Old Friends in Georgetown, Ky., according to his longtime trainer, Robertino Diodoro.
Lone Rock, a multiple Grade 2 winner of $1.4 million, raced some at Oaklawn during his career and in December 2021 captured the local Tinsel Stakes. He now lives on a farm not far from the track.
Old Friends admits approved horses as space permits, said Barbara Fossum, who is the organization’s horse intake manager.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Dr B, who won the Grade 3 Go for Wand Stakes here Dec. 2, is likely to run in the $150,000 Interborough Stakes on Jan. 20 and then be retired, her trainer, Butch Reid, said Friday.
Reid and part-owner Chuck Zacney had indicated the $200,000 Barbara Fritchie at Laurel Park in February was a goal in 2024, but in order to get to a top-flight stallion she will be retired before February, Reid said.
Dr B, who won the Go for Wand two years in a row, has a record of 6-7-2 from 22 starts and earnings of $583,240.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Linda Rice appears to have found herself another stakes-caliber female sprinter in Ain’t Broke, who was visually impressive winning a second-level allowance Thursday at Aqueduct.
Ain’t Broke, a 4-year-old daughter of Dialed In, made an eye-catching last-to-first move from the three-eighths pole to the quarter pole, then sustained her run to the wire to win by five lengths.
Hector Palma never went away.
Through the late summer and early fall, the 86-year-old Palma kept a presence at Santa Anita, notably in the mornings at Clocker’s Corner, while serving a provisional suspension issued by the Horseracing Welfare and Integrity Unit in August after one of his starters tested positive for methamphetamine.
In September, four of Palma’s employees were suspended from 30 to 90 days after they tested positive for methamphetamine and/or amphetamine, according to rules published by California Horse Racing Board stewards.
John Shear, a former rider who worked at Santa Anita in various capacities for nearly 60 years, including as paddock captain well into his 90s, died on Tuesday from natural causes at a rehabilitation facility in Arcadia, Calif.
Shear was 102. His death was announced by his family through a statement issued by Santa Anita. Shear would have been 103 next month.
At a veterinary clinic and a local farm in Southern California, the 2021 champion Echo Zulu and 2023 stakes winner Bus Buzz continue to recover from injuries sustained at Santa Anita earlier this fall.
Bus Buzz was pulled up in early stretch of an allowance race at Santa Anita on Nov. 3 when he sustained a foreleg injury that required surgery to perform an arthrodesis, which fused the affected joints. The surgery was conducted at Santa Anita on Nov. 5.
Overnight purses have been slashed 25 percent for the forthcoming winter-spring meeting at Golden Gate Fields as the flagship Northern California track deals with a purse overpayment of approximately $3 million in advance of its scheduled closure on June 9.
The reductions affect all levels of races and were made in an attempt to recoup the massive debt caused by a reduction in mutuel handle.
A maiden race worth $30,000 at the autumn meeting that ended on Sunday will have a purse of $22,500 at the start of the winter-spring meeting that begins on Dec. 26.
