PHOENIX – With Yavapai Downs having closed and no live racing to bridge the gap between Turf Paradise meets, it’s been a long dry spell this summer for Arizona horsemen and horseplayers. So you can understand the enthusiasm that greets the opening of the 2012-2013 Turf Paradise season on Friday. The 156-day meet runs through May 7, 2013.
Ann’s Smart Dancer was the feel-good story of 2011 in the Mid-Atlantic region, winning 5 of 8 starts, including three consecutive stakes restricted to Pennsylvania-breds. So far in 2012, however, Ann’s Smart Dancer has fizzled rather than sizzled.
Winless in six starts, Ann’s Smart Dancer will try to regain her good form when she makes her first start for new connections in Friday night’s $75,000 Ligature Stakes for Pennsylvania-bred fillies and fillies at Penn National.
Trainer Dale Saunders was expecting Ready Racer to set the pace in the $100,000 Speed to Spare at Northlands Park last Saturday, but the talented sprinter lost any chance he had when he stumbled badly at the start of the 1 3/8-mile race.
When Feature Jessie Gail, Ima Chickie Too, and Sweetest Illusion qualified for Friday’s $170,000 Pacific Coast Quarter Horse Racing Association Breeders’ Derby in time trials at Los Alamitos on Sept. 14, trainer Jose Antonio Flores had to watch on television.
Flores was in the midst of a 30-day suspension after one of his horses had tested positive for methamphetamine in June. The suspension ended Sept. 19, allowing Flores to return to his stable well in time for Friday’s rich derby. He has three of the 10 finalists in the 400-yard race.
ETOBICOKE, Ontario – Sour Grapes will experiment on the grass in Friday’s Woodbine feature, and her speed could be effective in the six-furlong first-level allowance, with the temporary rail out in lane 5.
Sour Grapes captured two Ontario-sired allowances at the meet, including one for nonwinners of three July 14, when she got a career-best 77 Beyer Speed Figure. Most recently, in a first-level allowance, she led in the two path on the turn en route to running second over an outside-biased track. The victorious Henny’s Heart subsequently ran third in a minor stakes at Fort Erie.
LEXINGTON, Ky. – The Darley Alcibiades Stakes often has proved a tongue-twister for newcomers to Keeneland, so trainer Al Stall Jr. has come up with a simpler name – at least as it applies to the 61st Alcibiades, which helps to open the 17-day fall meet Friday.
“It’s the United Nations,” said Stall. “It’s a melting pot of fillies from everywhere. It’s really hard to figure this one out.”
ETOBICOKE, Ontario – Anfield Park will be moving from the maiden ranks into Grade 3 stakes company for Saturday’s $200,000 Mazarine here at Woodbine.
But Steve Owens, who conditions Anfield Park for Empress Stable, knows that his filly will handle the 1 1/16-mile distance of the Mazarine, and the fact that she is Ontario-bred gives her a crack at shares of $50,000 in bonus money.
“She’s doing well,” said Owens. “She’s a big, good-looking, strapping filly and she’s really starting to mature.”
ARCADIA, Calif. - Jimmy Creed can earn a spot in the Breeders’ Cup Sprint on Nov. 3 with a win or close finish in Saturday’s $250,000 Santa Anita Sprint Championship.
The Grade 1 Sprint Championship will be the graded stakes debut for the 3-year-old Jimmy Creed, and a major test. The race is led by Amazombie, the winner of the 2011 BC Sprint and the 2011 champion sprinter.
LEXINGTON, Ky. – There was a crowd at the entry booth Tuesday morning, and it had nothing to do with the usual back-slapping reunions of horsemen, jockey agents, and backstretch types that invariably take place leading up to a Keeneland meet.
