HOT SPRINGS, Ark. - Titletown Five will make his next start in the Grade 3, $800,000 Sunland Derby and is to be ridden by Gary Stevens, trainer D. Wayne Lukas said Tuesday. The 1 1/8-mile prep is March 24.
Titletown Five was one of the most impressive maiden winners of the fall meet at Churchill Downs. He made his 3-year-old debut March 2 at Oaklawn, finishing second in the $60,000 Gazebo. Tuesday morning, the horse breezed five furlongs in 1:01.20 under Quevedo.
With Believe You Can’s race this past weekend comfortably out of the way, trainer Larry Jones on Monday turned his attention to Joyful Victory’s scheduled start Saturday in the Grade 1 Santa Margarita at Santa Anita. With Rosie Napravnik in the irons, Joyful Victory worked five furlongs in a bullet 59.80 seconds over a sloppy main track, the mare’s last serious exercise before she attempts to win her first Grade 1 race.
Six-year-old Delaunay has run in 10 claiming races and zero graded stakes, and six months ago, only serious followers of the Midwest or Mid-Atlantic racing circuits would even have known his name. But in appearance, on the clock, and in the view of speed-figure makers, Delaunay is one of the best horses in the country at the moment.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. - The 1:35.17 clocking Discreet Dancer posted winning the Gulfstream Park Handicap on Saturday turned out to be a magic number this weekend. His stablemate Cross Traffic posted the exact same time winning Sunday’s $54,500 co-feature by 7 1/2 lengths to remain undefeated in two starts for trainer Todd Pletcher. A 4-year-old son of Unbridled’s Song, Cross Traffic is owned by Gold Mark Farm.
Spring Venture and Spring in the Air both had very useful efforts Monday when the Mark Casse stablemates finished one-two in the $100,000 Ocala Breeders’ Sales Championship for 3-year-old fillies in Ocala, Fla. Spring Venture finished three-quarters of a length ahead of her more heralded stablemate, finishing the 1 1/16-mile race in 1:44.80 over the SafeTrack synthetic surface.
ARCADIA, Calif. – My Miss Aurelia is looking to celebrate her fourth birthday in style. The question is where the birthday party will be held.
A champion at 2 and a near-champion at 3, My Miss Aurelia is scheduled to begin her 4-year-old campaign Saturday – exactly four years after she was born – though whether she stays at Santa Anita for the Grade 1, $300,000 Santa Margarita Stakes or travels to Oaklawn for the Grade 3, $150,000 Azeri Stakes had yet to be determined, trainer Steve Asmussen said Monday.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – One of the horses trainer Ian Wilkes plans to run here at Gulfstream Park before the end of the meet is Capt. Candyman Can, a Grade 1 winner, who could make his next start in the Sir Shackelton Handicap on March 30.
Capt. Candyman Can, winner of the Grade 1 King’s Bishop at 3, is coming off a disappointing performance in Tampa Bay Downs’s Super Stakes on Feb. 23, when he made his first start in nearly 11 months.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – A year ago, trainer Michael Matz was preparing And Why Not to make her 3-year-old debut in the Grade 2 Gulfstream Park Oaks. On Wednesday, Matz will bring And Why Not back from a similar layoff, still hoping to win her entry-level allowance condition in the afternoon’s $54,500 main event, to be decided by a field of eight older fillies and mares at 1 1/16 miles on the main track.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Trainer Ian Wilkes summed up Saturday’s shocking turn of events, when Fort Larned stumbled badly leaving the gate and lost jockey Brian Hernandez Jr. immediately after the start of the start of the Grade 2 Gulfstream Park Handicap, in just eight words.
“I think we may have dodged a bullet,” Wilkes said Monday morning after reporting that all seemed well with Fort Larned in the aftermath of what could have been a disastrous situation for the 2012 Breeders’ Cup Classic winner.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Richard Mandella continued to play a hot hand at Santa Anita on Sunday when he sent out Rumor for a mild upset win in the Grade 3, $100,250 Las Flores Stakes for female sprinters, giving the Hall of Fame trainer his seventh win out of his last nine runners.
Always quick with a quip, Mandella said his recent success was because “some of these young guys thought I was buried, but I thought I’d show them.”
Rumor, finally earning her first stakes win, added to a strike rate of nearly 33 percent this meet for Mandella.
