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.
ELMONT, N.Y. – They say good things come in threes, so Christophe Clement’s bandwagon will be overflowing when he sends out Right One in the Grade 3, $150,000 Poker Stakes, the featured event on a 10-race Fourth of July program.
Clement has captured the last two graded turf stakes here, with Summer Front in the Hill Prince on June 16 and Mystical Star in last Saturday’s New York, and leads all trainers with 17 grass victories at the meet.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Retired jockey Patti Cooksey will make her debut as a steward with the start of the 29-day Ellis Park meet on Wednesday in Henderson, Ky.
Cooksey, who has worked in recent years as director of public relations for the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission, will join Barbara Borden and Butch Becraft in the Ellis stewards’ stand, making for the first-ever majority of females as stewards at a Kentucky track.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. – It took a few moments for the folks in the intensive care unit at USC Medical Center to figure out what all that cheering was about in one of the rooms Saturday afternoon.
Trainer Mike Mitchell, who underwent surgery for a brain tumor early Friday, was resting in his hospital room, with his wife Denise, and adult daughters McCall and Shea visiting. Mitchell may not have been able to attend the race, but no one could take racing out of the man, even a day after a serious operation.
It has been 13 years since Ellis Park had the July 4 holiday all to itself. A decision last year by Churchill Downs officials to concede the date to their western Kentucky brethren figures to get the 29-day Ellis meet off to a solid start, especially in light of how entries for the Wednesday opener went.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. – John Johny Jak, vanned off after winning Sunday’s $70,800 Robert Kerlan Handicap at Betfair Hollywood Park, was euthanized Sunday evening because of a shoulder injury, trainer Kristin Mulhall said.
John Johny Jak was pulled up about a quarter-mile after the finish and transported to Mulhall’s stable for evaluation. Mulhall said that several veterinarians were consulted in the hours after the race.
“We ended having to put him down,” she said Sunday evening. “It was the hardest thing.”
