GRAND ISLAND, Neb. - Friday's opening-day card at Fonner Park has been called off as heavy snow continued to fall in the region, track management announced midday Thursday.
ETOBICOKE, Ontario – Woodbine has announced Thoroughbred racing dates going from April 20 to Dec. 15 for this year, pending Ontario Racing Commission approval.
Racing for the 133-day meet is scheduled for 1 p.m. every Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and these holiday Mondays: May 20, July 1, Aug. 5, Sept. 2, and Oct. 14.
Wednesday night cards, with a 6:45 p.m. post time, begin June 5. There will be no Wednesday racing following a long weekend. Thursday racing has been dropped for this year.
ARCADIA, Calif. - Eblouissante, an unbeaten half-sister to the 2010 Horse of the Year Zenyatta, is nearing her first workout since mid-January.
Trainer John Shirreffs said on Thursday that Eblouissante will work “in the next couple of days.”
“She’s been galloping on the main track,” he said.
A potential stakes debut in the $300,000 Santa Margarita Stakes over 1 1/8 miles on March 16 is contingent on how Eblouissante works.
“We won’t know for sure until she breezes and we see where we are,” Shirreffs said.
ARCADIA, Calif. - Demonic, the winner of a seven-furlong maiden race for 3-year-olds in his debut on Jan. 13, had a workout delayed this week because of a “minor issue,” trainer John Sadler said.
Sadler and owners Lee and Susan Searing are hoping to start Demonic in the $300,000 San Felipe Stakes over 1 1/16 miles on March 9 if the colt can resume full training.
[ROAD TO THE KENTUCKY DERBY: Prep races, point standings, replays]
ARCADIA, Calif. – By the end of last summer, Chips All In was a tired 3-year-old.
He was running well – second in a division of the Oceanside Stakes in July and third in the Grade 2 La Jolla Handicap in August – but trainer Jeff Mullins saw signs of fatigue.
“He’d been in training since they broke him,” Mullins said. “He was tailing off.”
Coyote Legend’s natural speed could give him a tactical advantage over Skip a Smile when the last two Texas-bred horses of the year meet Saturday night in the $50,000 Jersey Village at Sam Houston Race Park. A field of eight will go in the 1 1/16-mile turf race restricted to 4-year-olds and up bred in Texas.
NEW ORLEANS – Chad Brown has skipped several rungs trainers traditionally climb on their way to the top. He won with his first Breeders’ Cup starter, Maram. The first Eclipse Award finalist he trained, Stacelita, was named champion turf female of 2011. Zagora won the same award for her 2012 campaign. Just 35 and with barely four years as a head trainer, Brown has not so much climbed a career ladder as sprinted it two steps at a time.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – N.F.’s Destiny is listed at even-money on the morning line for Saturday’s $62,000 first-level allowance feature at Aqueduct. Those odds are most apropos for a horse who, in two separate accidents as a weanling, was given a 50-50 chance to survive.
But survive N.F.’s Destiny did and now the 4-year-old New York-bred gelding is thriving as he seeks his third consecutive victory when he faces open company runners for the first time. The allowance serves as Saturday’s feature after the Kings Point Stakes for New York-breds failed to fill.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Dreaming of Julia is the marquee name in Saturday’s $250,000 Davona Dale Stakes at Gulfstream Park and the main reason the Grade 2 stakes drew a field of only five 3-year-old fillies. But the heavy favorite could have her hands full with the up and coming Live Lively, a lightly raced but extremely promising daughter of Medaglia d’Oro who will try to stretch her speed out around two turns for the first time.
The 1 1/16-mile Davona Dale serves as a prep for Gulfstream Park’s premier race for 3-year-old fillies, the Grade 2 Florida Oaks, on March 30.
Jeff Greenhill said this week that his stable star Mac the Man most likely will skip the final prep and just train into the $550,000 Spiral Stakes at Turfway Park on March 23.
Mac the Man was a dominant winner of two earlier $50,000 preps, the Turfway Prevue and 96 Rock Stakes, and probably would have been the favorite in the next one, the $100,000 John Battaglia Memorial. The Battaglia, a 1 1/16-mile Polytrack race, will be run next Saturday, March 2, at the northern Kentucky track.