SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - Paynter, the Haskell winner, is coming to Saratoga after all and will be here for the Travers.
But will not be participating.
Paynter, who missed about two weeks of training because of illness, was scheduled to van from Belmont to Saratoga on Wednesday. He will train here through the weekend before flying back to Southern California on Monday, trainer Bob Baffert said.
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SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - After missing the first week of the Saratoga meet, Hall of Fame rider John Velazquez has more than made up for lost time.
Velazquez has ridden 22 winners from 88 starters (25 percent) and ranks fourth in the rider standings. While his two-year reign atop the jockey standings will come to an end – Ramon Dominguez has 47 victories – Velazquez could very well break Jerry Bailey’s all-time record for wins at Saratoga. Velazquez has 677, trailing Bailey by 16 entering the final 12 days.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - The flat feature on Thursday’s nine-race card – highlighted by the Grade 1 New York Turf Writers Steeplechase – is a third-level allowance race going 1 1/8 miles on the dirt. The New York-bred Lunar Victory tops the six-horse field as he seeks his fifth consecutive victory.
On July 23, Lunar Victory came off a 5 1/2-month layoff to win the $100,000 Evan Shipman Stakes for New York-breds. He hadn’t run since winning an open-company first-level allowance race on March 3, a race in which he bled through Lasix.
AUBURN, Wash. – After three dark days to digest the results from Sunday – when Class Included dominated the Emerald Distaff and Taylor Said narrowly won the Longacres Mile – Emerald Downs enters the final stretch of its 81-day meeting with seven races Thursday. It’s the final Thursday program of the meeting, and with just 17 racing days remaining, many of the season-ending honors have been decided.
Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs, Ark., will open its 2013 meet in January with a record purse structure that includes maiden special weight races worth $53,000 and allowance races worth as much as $56,000. The track announced on Tuesday that it plans to pay out close to $20 million in total purses during the 56-date meet, up from $18 million during the same number of dates in 2012.
Oaklawn’s purses are projected to average more than $350,000 a day, including $5.7 million in stakes, in 2013. The racing program is funded in part by an electronic gaming operation at Oaklawn.
AUBURN, Wash. – The owner and trainer of Taylor Said will sit down this week and map out a course of action, or perhaps inaction, for their horse following his rousing victory Sunday in the Grade 3, $200,000 Longacres Mile at Emerald Downs.
Both Glen Todd, who owns the speedy 4-year-old, and trainer Troy Taylor said they will consider two options: turn out Taylor Said for the winter or aim for the Breeders’ Cup in November at Santa Anita.
Coil, who returned from a lengthy layoff to win a money allowance July 26, stayed on edge for the Grade 2, $250,000 Pat O’Brien Stakes on Sunday with an easy half-mile work in 48.80 seconds Tuesday morning under Rafael Bejarano.
Bob Baffert, who trains Coil, said his long-range goal this year is the Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile.
Baffert also will run Capital Account in the seven-furlong Pat O’Brien. Capital Account also worked half-mile under Bejarano, in 50.40 seconds.
Bejarano will ride Coil in the race. David Flores rides Capital Account.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Talk about being game.
The connections of Speightscity, unraced since Feb. 4, were planning to pay a $20,000 supplemental fee to run their 3-year-old in Saturday’s $1 million Travers Stakes.
The Travers is actually Plan B after Friday’s $100,000 Bernardini Stakes failed to fill.
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DEL MAR, Calif. – A little more than a week ago, Buddy Johnston and trainer Don Warren were hoping to shoot for consecutive wins in the Pacific Classic with Acclamation, last year’s champion older horse. He is sidelined, at least temporarily, but on Tuesday morning, both men were at least contemplating running their second-stringer, Norvsky, in the Grade 1, $1 million Pacific Classic on Sunday.
“We’re thinking about it,” said Johnston, who bred Norvsky and is his co-owner. “But we’ll probably run in the mile.”
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Waiting to unsaddle Street Life after the colt’s eighth-place finish in his debut at Gulfstream Park, trainer Chad Brown wasn’t expecting to hear rave reviews from jockey Jose Lezcano.
So imagine Brown’s surprise when Lezcano got off the horse after the six-furlong race and told him how high he was on the colt, but that he would benefit from going two turns.
