Defending champ Excessive Passion will be looking for his first 2012 victory in Wednesday’s $75,000 Sam J. Whiting Handicap at the Alameda County Fair in Pleasanton, Calif.
The Jeff Bonde-trained Excessive Passion has run locally twice, winning the Everett Nevin Alameda County Futurity in 2009 and the Whiting last year.
One member of the Englehart family should be posing for a picture in the Finger Lakes winner’s circle following the Wednesday’s Niagara Stakes for 3-year-old fillies. But will it be Chris Englehart, the track’s leading trainer each of the past nine years, or his son, Jeremiah, who will saddle two contenders compared with dad’s one in the six-furlong feature?
LINCOLN, Neb. – Reach One More enters Wednesday’s HBPA Stakes for older horses still seeking his first win of the year, but should rule a strong favorite as he heads a compact field of five going a mile and 70 yards in the Independence Day feature at Lincoln Race Course. The track offers a rare Wednesday card leading into its closing weekend.
Danny Pish, who had a three-win lead in the Lone Star Park trainer standings heading into the final week of the meet Tuesday, has several horses pointing to the track’s Stars of Texas Day program on Saturday. The card features four restricted stakes worth a total of $300,000, including a pair of $75,000 Texas Stallion Stakes races for 2-year-olds, the Staunch Avenger and the Pan Zareta.
OCEANPORT, N.J. – The summer of 2010 at Monmouth Park was magical for Get Serious, as he won a trio of Grade 3 stakes during the meet.
Two years removed from that terrific season, Get Serious tries to turn back the clock on Wednesday in the Grade 3, $100,000 Red Bank Stakes on the turf, the feature on an 11-race holiday card that starts at 12:45 p.m. Eastern.
Get Serious bids for his first victory since the 2010 Red Bank.
Star Guitar’s streak is getting so serious, it’s starting to make trainer Al Stall Jr. sweat. After racking up his 10th straight win Saturday night at Evangeline Downs in Opelousas, La, the horse has not lost a race for more than a year and a half.
“It’s turned into a situation where it becomes such an event when he runs, for us at least,” said Stall, who trains Star Guitar for breeder Brittlyn Stable. “The expectations get so high I find myself getting little more nervous than I used to. But he always delivers.”
INGLEWOOD, Calif. – The top 3-year-olds in California will soon hit the road, but not until a final local appearance at Betfair Hollywood Park.
The retired Kentucky Derby winner I’ll Have Another will parade between races on Saturday, and later leave for stud duty in Japan.
Santa Anita-based Bodemeister and Paynter will aim for rich races in the East without a local start.
Kentucky-based jockey Leandro Goncalves made a profitable trip to the Mid-Atlantic region last weekend to win the $100,000 Wild and Wonderful aboard Good Lord and the $400,000 Red Legend on Sum of the Parts with his only two mounts on the card at Charles Town. Goncalves will try to accomplish a similar feat when he travels to Delaware Park on Wednesday to ride just one horse, Cayllano, in the $50,000 White Clay Creek Stakes for 2-year-old fillies.
MIAMI – Not all girls take after their mothers. But that’s exactly what Frolic’s Revenge has done to this point in her career.
Frolic’s Revenge is by Stormy Frolic, who won four stakes, including the Tropical Park Oaks. Frolic’s Revenge is already a four-time stakes winner just halfway through her 3-year-old campaign and will be odds-on to get her fifth stakes victory when she goes postward the prohibitive favorite in Wednesday’s $55,000 Sweettrickydancer Stakes at Calder.
ETOBICOKE, Ontario – Blue Heart established herself as one of the best Canadian-bred fillies on the grounds here last October with her victory in the open Mazarine Stakes at 1 1/16 miles. But after Blue Heart failed to duplicate that effort when third in the restricted Princess Elizabeth and fourth in the Ontario Lassie at the same distance, she headed down to Florida with questions looming over her 3-year-old campaign.
It turned out that trainer Brian Lynch had the answers, and he was rewarded when Blue Heart prevailed by 1 3/4 lengths in Sunday’s $250,000 Bison City Stakes.
