INGLEWOOD, Calif. – The races that make up a lucrative pick six at Betfair Hollywood Park on Thursday cover nearly every category of racing – a maiden special weight, an allowance race with a stakes-quality field, two maiden claimers, and three races for claimers ranging in value from $10,000 to $25,000.
Finding the winners of those races will test the skills of handicappers focused on the pick six, which begins with a carryover of $105,448 from Sunday.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. – Mamma Kimbo was a tired filly after she finished fourth as the even-money favorite in the Grade 2 Black-Eyed Susan Stakes at Pimilco in May.
“She lost a lot of weight and didn’t look good,” trainer Bob Baffert said.
Unraced since the Black-Eyed Susan, Mamma Kimbo returns to racing in a $52,000 allowance race over 6 1/2 furlongs at Betfair Hollywood Park on Thursday. Baffert considers Mamma Kimbo a candidate for the $300,000 La Brea Stakes over seven furlongs at Santa Anita on Dec. 26.
Four months of winter racing commence Thursday night at Turfway Park in northern Kentucky with a scaled-down schedule and no sponsor for the spring showcase race – yet with hope that the track’s fate may not be as doomed as it once seemed.
Thursday marks the start of the Holiday meet, which runs through Dec. 31 on a traditional 22-day schedule. The winter-spring meet then runs Jan. 1 through March 31, and that’s when the effects will be evident from the recent decision by the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission to award September 2013 dates to Churchill Downs instead of Turfway.
A dramatic finish could mark the start of an interesting rivalry for Northern California racing fans.
Hudson Landing pulled off a last-stride victory over Control Seeker in the Grade 3, $100,000 All American Friday at Golden Gate Fields – his second Grade 3 victory of the year following the San Francisco Mile on turf in April.
The news from both barns after the race gives fans something to look forward to: Both runners will be pointed to next spring’s San Francisco Mile.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – It isn’t often advisable to back a horse coming off a win in the lower-level maiden-claiming ranks when he meets winners for the first time.
However, there could be two exceptions to that rule in the co-features Thursday at Aqueduct.
In Thursday’s seventh, Sokitumi Samurai, a 12 1/2-length winner in an off-the-turf maiden $25,000 claimer on Sept. 19, could play out as the primary speed when he steps up into a $58,000 starter optional claimer at a mile in which his five rivals all appear to want to come from off the pace.
MIAMI - Bennie Stutts Jr., a racetrack fixture for more than 40 years, rang down the curtain on his long career after sending out Iwillneversaynever in Saturday’s sixth race.
Stutts, 74, comes from a racing family. His father, Ben, and uncles Harry and George Stutts all preceded him in the business. Born just outside the Fair Grounds in New Orleans but a football star at Coral Gables High School in Miami, Stutts first ventured out on his own as a trainer in 1968 and has raced at Calder since the plant opened in 1971.
MIAMI – The outcome was the same for both camps but the connections of Csaba and Ducduc saw the result from a different perspective in the wake of Saturday’s dead heat for win in the Grade 3 Fred W. Hooper Handicap.
Trainer Phil Gleaves expressed a bit of disappointment in having to settle for a share of the winner’s purse with Csaba in the Hooper and for good reason. After all, his horse went postward the 3-10 favorite coming off a 14-length victory six weeks earlier in the Tropical Park Derby.
ELMONT, N.Y. – Yes, the Kentucky Derby is still more than five months away, but it’s not too early for trainer Todd Pletcher to begin thinking about it.
On the cover of his white binder that houses his various condition books is a list of all the prep races that lead to the May 4 Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs.
Given the depth of his crop, there may not be a race restricted to 3-year-olds run in the first part of 2013 in which Pletcher isn’t participating.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. - Jockey Irad Ortiz Jr. was hoping to return to race-riding Wednesday after missing the weekend due to a bruised back suffered in a Friday spill at Aqueduct.
Ortiz, 20, had a Tuesday afternoon appointment with his personal doctor at which time he was hoping to get clearance to ride, according to his agent, Tony Micallef.
“He’s feeling pretty good,” Micallef said Monday. “If not Wednesday, for sure Thursday.”
OZONE PARK, N.Y. - While the majority of trainer Todd Pletcher’s stakes winners are headed for the warm climes of south Florida this week, multiple graded stakes winner Caixa Eletronica was left behind as one of the anchors to the New York string.
Pletcher said Caixa Eletronica, winner of last Thursday’s Grade 3 Fall Highweight, would be pointed to the $1 million Charles Town Classic – a race he won this past spring – next April and have a few starts in the Northeast beforehand. One of those races could be in the General George at Laurel, typically run on Presidents Day.
