ETOBICOKE, Ontario – Trainer Chris Block enjoyed a highly successful run here at Woodbine last year with Never Retreat, who captured the Grade 2 Canadian and Grade 2 Dance Smartly and went on to be voted Canada’s champion female turf horse and Horse of the Year.
Never Retreat is retired, and in foal to Kitten’s Joy, but Block will be represented by his first starter at the meeting when Mister Marti Gras runs in Saturday’s Grade 3 Eclipse at 1 1/16 miles on the main track.
At 30, Dan Blacker is a rookie trainer, trying to gain a foothold on the competitive Southern California circuit.
He has six horses based at Hollywood Park, not as many as he would like, which has led him to work at times for trainer John Shirreffs as an exercise rider in recent months.
That may not last much longer. Blacker expects more horses in coming weeks, and could attract the right kind of attention if the outsider Barney Rebel runs well in Saturday’s $150,000 American Handicap.
Something has to give when Bach’s Homebrew and Reach One More face off in the $20,000-added Big Red Mile for older Nebraska-breds going a mile at Lincoln Race Course on Saturday afternoon. The race drew only five entrants, but those two should put on quite a show to open the holiday weekend.
Catlaunch’s two races this year have been out of character for the Ohio-bred millionaire, and he will look to rebound in Saturday’s $50,000 Michael F. Rowland Memorial Handicap.
Age may be catching up to the 11-year-old, who has won this six-furlong race five times since 2006, with his only loss coming in 2009 when he finished third, beaten a length by Left On Base. Catlaunch, the 2011 Ohio horse of the year, will need a top effort to win the Rowland. He faces Raise the Reward, who has beaten him in both of his 2012 starts.
At the Fair Hill training center in Maryland, Union Rags worked five furlongs in 1:01 over a fast dirt track, according to trainer Michael Matz. Union Rags worked by himself under exercise rider Peter Brette.
“He went real nice, galloped out real good and strong, came back, and cooled out real well,” Matz said.
Matz said he likens Fair Hill’s dirt surface to Belmont’s main track.
“It’s more sandy than clay,” Matz said. “I think these two tracks are similar.”
AUBURN, Wash. – Promising 3-year-old First Last Chance, after a winter detour to Kentucky, will headline Saturday’s feature race at Emerald Downs. The card begins at 2 p.m. Pacific, and the feature, a first-level optional $25,000 claimer at 5 1/2 furlongs, is the eighth of nine races.
The purse is a robust $18,000, yet with the Auburn Handicap just a week away, only five horses were signed on for Saturday’s race. The field includes a pair of speedy front-runners, and three others, including First Last Chance, who do their best running from off the pace.
ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. – Typically, Dale Romans makes his move later in Arlington’s series of stakes races for 3-year-old grass horses. The Romans-trained Kitten’s Joy won the Grade 1 Secretariat Stakes on Arlington Million Day in 2002, and Romans won that race again in 2010 with Paddy O’Prado.
This year, Romans isn’t waiting around. Silver Max, whose most recent win in a sharp three-race streak came in the May 4 American Turf at Churchill Downs, tops a good field of 10 entrants in the $125,000 Arlington Classic.
C C’s Pal and Winning Image, two mares who came out on the wrong end of photo finishes with Nicole H earlier this season, will take another crack at the five-time stakes winner in Saturday’s $150,000 My Juliet Stakes for female sprinters at Parx Racing.
Nicole H, who won the Grade 2 Distaff at Aqueduct as part of her abbreviated campaign in 2011, nearly added another Grade 2 win to her r é sum é when she was beaten a neck by Magical Feeling in the Barbara Fritchie Handicap at Laurel Park in February. That day, Nicole H nosed out C C’s Pal for second.
ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. – Upperline is the horse to beat Saturday in the Grade 3, $150,000 Arlington Matron Stakes, but that also was the case in the 2011, when Upperline could only finish fourth as the 2-1 Matron favorite. And the longer one looks at this year’s Matron, a 1 1/8-mile Polytrack race, the wider grows the range of plausible outcomes. A win by Hemera would qualify as somewhat shocking, but some sort of case can be made for each of the other six entrants.
