The optimism that Shaun Hubbard, the new general manager of Ruidoso Downs, has for the New Mexico meet that opens Friday is backed up at the entry box. The track, which is home to the $2.4 million All American Futurity for Quarter Horses, will open its season with 25 trial races for the Grade 1, $600,000 Ruidoso Futurity. And on Saturday, champion Ochoa, who won last year’s All American, will launch his 3-year-old season in trials for the Grade 1, $697,207 Ruidoso Derby.
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DRF Past Performances
Nates Mineshaft is headed to the Grade 3, $300,000 Lone Star Park Handicap on Monday after breezing for the race Wednesday at Churchill Downs. His trainer, Austin Smith, was working on travel arrangements for the horse the same morning. Nates Mineshaft, who won the Grade 2 New Orleans Handicap in April, has raced once since, finishing sixth in the Grade 2 Alysheba at Churchill Downs.
“He worked very well this morning,” Smith said Wednesday. “We’re trying to work out plane reservations. We’re going to make it there one way or another.”
AUBURN, Wash. – A two-day pick-five carryover of $21,055 is likely to attract a crowd of interested horseplayers when racing resumes Friday evening at Emerald Downs. The pick-five sequence – races 3 through 7 – begins shortly before 7 p.m. Pacific.
Barring scratches, a total of 43 horses will start in the five races, an average of 8.6 per race, and the great challenge for handicappers will be narrowing down the 42,240 possible outcomes into a manageable number. There are no standout singles in the sequence.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Trainer Nick Zito has sent out the last two winners of the Belmont Stakes that were run when a Triple Crown was on the line.
In 2004, it was Zito’s Birdstone who ran past the fan favorite Smarty Jones to deny him his bid for racing immortality. In 2008, it was Da’ Tara, who went gate to wire in a race in which Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner Big Brown failed to finish, being pulled up around the far turn by jockey Kent Desormeaux.
ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. – Alternation, currently the top-rated horse in the weekly NTRA Thoroughbred Poll, came out of his game win last Friday in the Pimlico Special in good condition and will make his next start in the Stephen Foster Handicap on June 16 at Churchill Downs as long as he continues to train to his connections’ satisfaction, trainer Donnie Von Hemel said Wednesday.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Tahoe Lake and Simmard will be sticking with their specialty, the turf marathon, when returning to action Saturday in the Grade 3, $100,000 Louisville Handicap, the first graded stakes at Churchill Downs since the May 5 Kentucky Derby.
Simmard, shipping in from Woodbine for trainer Roger Attfield, is likely to come favored in the 1 1/2-mile Louisville after finishing third at 4-1 in his last race, the Elkhorn Stakes on closing day at Keeneland. Tahoe Lake, locally based with Ken McPeek, was second at 15-1 in the Elkhorn.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. – This spring, trainer Doug O’Neill has had as many winners in the Triple Crown as he has in the first four weeks of the Betfair Hollywood Park meeting.
While I’ll Have Another’s popular success in the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes has left O’Neill at the top of racing, his Hollywood Park meeting has been slow. He has two wins with 16 starters through Sunday.
“It’s been quiet, but at the same time we’re part of some pretty cool history going on,” he said earlier this week.
Slowly, he says, the activity will increase on the home front.
It is with a mixture of frustration, hope, and envy that Michael Matz prepares Union Rags to take on I’ll Have Another in the 144th Belmont Stakes on June 9 at Belmont Park.
Frustration because of the terrible trip Union Rags had in the Kentucky Derby on May 5. Hope that Union Rags can show his best in the Belmont. And envy that another horse is going for the Triple Crown.
“I thought this horse could win the Triple Crown,” Matz said of Union Rags during a national teleconference Wednesday. “But you have to let it go, because it’s not going to come back.”
ALTOONA, Iowa – With the Iowa Festival of Racing looming large the last weekend of June, Prairie Meadows conducts local preps for the Festival’s two sprint races, the $100,000 Saylorville and the $125,000 Iowa Sprint Handicap, this Friday night.