LOUISVILLE, Ky. – The claiming game can be a touchy thing among owners, with egos bruised and misunderstandings apt to develop. Ken Ramsey has an endless number of stories in that regard, having experienced it all in more than 40 years in racing. One involves a claiming war he had years ago with Maggi Moss, and the moral of that story was that everyone lived to tell about it.
OCEANPORT, N.J. – Ben Perkins Jr. hopes to keep the good times rolling Friday when he sends out Greatful Heir in the $42,000, first-level allowance feature for filly and mare turf sprinters at Monmouth Park.
Perkins, the leading trainer here in 2000, is coming off a bang-up week at Monmouth in which he saddled four and took home three wins and a second.
The big weekend gave him six wins for the meet, good for a six-way tie for second place and leaving him only one victory behind the leader, Bruce Alexander.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – The temptation was to think Nates Mineshaft was only effective at Fair Grounds, a horse whose meteoric rise from obscure claimer to multiple graded stakes winner coincided with racing over the same racetrack.
After four spectacular wins at Fair Grounds, including a New Orleans Handicap romp in which he earned a gaudy 113 Beyer Speed Figure, Nates Mineshaft thudded back to Earth when shipping north to Churchill Downs for the Alysheba on the May 4 Kentucky Oaks undercard and getting beat 20 lengths by Successful Dan.
Summer Hit is heading to trainer Jerry Hollendorfer’s Southern California barn after winning Saturday’s $100,000 Silky Sullivan by a neck over multiple stakes winner Stoney Fleece at Golden Gate Fields.
Summer Hit, a Betrando gelding, has 4 wins in 6 starts plus a second and a a third-place finish against older in the Gray Memo at Hollywood Park. He has earned $100,347.
INGLEWOOD, N.Y. - Angegreen, second in the Group 2 Italian Oaks at San Siro Racecourse on May 26, will make her American debut in the $350,000 American Oaks on July 14, according to the Team Valor International partnership.
Co-owned with Robert Lapenta, Angegreen is an Italian-bred filly by Ekraar. Trained by John Hammond, Angegreen has won three races, and made her stakes debut in the Italian Oaks over 1 3/8 miles on turf where she was beaten 1 1/2 lengths by Cherry Collect.
The Italian Oaks was Angegreen’s first start for Team Valor and LaPenta.
The final rating for the race portion of the Belmont Stakes broadcast on NBC on Saturday was a 4.8 with an 11 share, according to the network. The rating was up 12 percent compared to a 4.3 rating for the race portion of last year’s broadcast, and the share this year was up 10 percent compared to last year’s broadcast.
MIAMI – Field Commission turned out to be the unlikeliest of heroes on Saturday’s Festival of the Sun preview card.
The 7-year-old Field Commission had not started since November 2010 and had never run on dirt in his 28-race career prior to going postward among the outsiders at 18-1 in Saturday’s $75,000 Ponche Handicap. But the Canadian-bred son of Service Stripe not only proved a convincing winner of the Ponche, which serves as a prep for the Grade 2 Smile Sprint Handicap on July 7, he also established a new stakes record in the process.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. – Creative Cause, third in the Preakness Stakes in his last start on May 19, is in the midst of a vacation likely to last until Del Mar later this summer, trainer Mike Harrington said.
“I’m still going easy with him,” he said. “I’ll give him a little R and R.”
Owned by Heinz Steinmann, Creative Cause won the Grade 2 San Felipe Stakes against Bodemeister at Santa Anita in March and was later second, by a nose, to I’ll Have Another in the Santa Anita Derby.
Creative Cause was fifth in the Kentucky Derby.
Smarty Corn, a 4-year-old Smarty Jones filly trained by Bob Hess Sr., scored her third straight wire-to-wire victory Sunday in her return from a seven-week freshener, winning a $62,500 optional claimer at the second allowance condition. Because she ran for the claiming price, she’s eligible to come back in that spot.
Hess was pleased with the effort, but said the filly had a “perfect trip.”
GRAND PRAIRIE, Texas – Danny Pish has won 15 training titles in Texas, but none at Lone Star Park near Dallas, and that is something he hopes will change this meet. Pish moved within one win of the lead in the standings last weekend, and now trails only Bret Calhoun, the defending champ, heading into Thursday night’s races at Lone Star.
