INGLEWOOD, Calif. – Comma to the Top lost a fellow pacesetter for Monday’s $100,250 Los Angeles Handicap at Betfair Hollywood Park when Fast Bullet was scratched the morning of the race because of illness.
Comma to the Top lost the rest of his competition in the Grade 3 Los Angeles Handicap shortly after the start.
Ridden by Edwin Maldonado, Comma to the Top took the lead a few strides into the six-furlong race and never was troubled, winning the ninth stakes of his career by 1 1/4 lengths.
ELMONT, N.Y. – Cross Traffic had fended off the early pace challenge of Handsome Mike and then turned back a stretch bid from Mark Valeski. With a furlong to go in Monday’s 120th Metropolitan Handicap, it looked as though Cross Traffic was going to avenge his tough head loss in the Grade 3 Westchester Handicap last month.
ELMONT, N.Y. - The primary purpose for bringing Tiz Miz Sue back to the races as a 6-year-old was to try to and get her a Grade 1 victory.
Mission accomplished.
Under a confident Joe Rocco Jr., Tiz Miz Sue engaged Authenticity outside the eighth pole then outfinished that rival to the wire to win Monday’s Grade 1, $400,000 Ogden Phipps Handicap by a half-length at Belmont Park.
Uncle T Seven defeated Sundae on Sunday and Dan’s Gold in the $50,000 George Barker Memorial on Monday at Finger Lakes. Ridden by Wilfredo Rohena in the six-furlong race for New York-bred 3-year-olds and up, Uncle T Seven rallied from sixth place to edge Sundae on Sunday by a half-length, with Dan’s Gold another half-length back in third.
The favorite, Uncle T Seven paid $6.40 to win. A 7-year-old Freud gelding owned and trained by David Jacobson, Uncle T Seven covered the six furlongs in 1:11.11.
ELMONT, N.Y. - A matchup between Saginaw and the Grade 1 winner Willy Beamin in the $100,000 Affirmed Success Handicap highlights Saturday's New York Showcase Day program.
The New York Showcase comprises 10 races restricted to New York-breds, including seven stakes worth $850,000. Unlike the Showcase program held in the fall, however, several of these races came up light in numbers, with three six-horse fields and one seven-horse field.
ELMONT, N.Y. – Just as pace made the race in the first two legs of the Triple Crown, so it did in Monday’s $200,000 Sands Point, when Discreet Marq established an easy tempo and held off Wave Theory to win the Grade 2 turf race for 3-year-old fillies.
Making her first start in four months since leading to the final strides of the Sweetest Chant for her former trainer Jane Cibelli, Discreet Marq grabbed the lead with Jose Lezcano aboard and loped along through early fractions of 25.57 and 49.64 seconds, with Kitten’s Queen applying token pressure in the 1 1/16-mile race.
Owner William Stiritz’s trainer, Scott Becker, is based at Fairmount Park, with assistant trainer John Pool running Stiritz’s active string in Chicago. It was Becker who pointed out last fall at Hawthorne the availability of Hogy for an $80,000 claiming price.
“I’ve watched the horse, and I’ve always kind of liked the horse,” Becker said Monday. “I saw he was in for a tag, and [Stiritz] said, ‘Go for it.’ He really didn’t blink an eye.”
ELMONT, N.Y. - Joha, a Grade 1-winning 2-year-old of 2012, has been transferred from Mike Maker to trainer Tom Albertrani. On Monday, he had his first published work of the year, going three furlongs in 38.50 seconds over the main track at Belmont Park.
Joha won the Grade 1 Breeders’ Futurity when he was with Maker, one of 3 wins from 8 starts last year. He is owned by the Bluegrass Equine Bloodstock.
Albertrani said he is attempting to get Joha to the Grade 3, $150,000 Hill Prince, a one-mile race on turf on June 15.
The 3-year-old colt General Election was, of course, raised in fields of grass and has trod over turf innumerable times during his time on Earth. But it was not until he stepped onto the Arlington grass course for the Arlington Classic on Saturday that General Election had been out on an actual turf course.
His trainer, Kellyn Gorder, using General Election’s all-weather form and his pedigree as a guide, thought his horse would like the experience, and he was right. With a rail-hugging ride from Joe Rocco Jr., General Election won his first graded stakes in his eighth start.
ELMONT, N.Y. - If trainer Bill Mott needed a sign to know how Royal Delta was doing as he prepares her for the second half of the year, he got it on Monday when the two-time champion put in a most impressive five-furlong workout over Belmont’s main track.
Royal Delta, under regular exercise rider Rodolphe Brissett, worked five furlongs in 58.96 seconds, with a final quarter in 22.47. She galloped out six furlongs in 1:11.45.
