With four multiple stakes winners possible for the race, including the Grade 2 winner Jeranimo, Saturday’s running of the Grade 3, $150,000 San Francisco Mile could be one of the deepest in race history.
As of early in the week, the one-mile turf race looked as if it could attract eight runners.
When Janetta’s Ginger won a head bob over Snackable to score in her debut last Thursday at Golden Gate Fields, she went off at 8.90-1, returning $19.80, quite an underlay for a 2-year-old filly who was probably bucking 10,000-1 odds ever to start a race.
Jockey Irving Orozco notched his first Thoroughbred victory in Saturday’s second race at Golden Gate Fields.
Orozco, who rode one race at Santa Anita, was 0 for 17 at Golden Gate Fields with 2 seconds and 3 thirds before he rallied Clearlyaluckyguy from sixth to win the 5 1/2-furlong maiden claimer by 3 1/4 lengths. Clearlyaluckyguy returned $5.80.
LEXINGTON, Ky. – Until finishing second in the Dowager Stakes on the Keeneland turf last fall, Upperline had never raced as far as 1 1/2 miles. But given that encouraging effort, along with her advancing age and pedigree, trainer Mike Stidham laid her up this winter with the thought of aiming for more turf marathons this year.
With one tightener under her belt, Upperline returns to Keeneland as the horse to catch and beat in the Thursday feature, the Grade 3, $150,000 Bewitch Stakes at 1 1/2 miles on the turf.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – There was a time, not too long ago, when no trainer would dare start a horse in the Kentucky Derby without giving his 3-year-old plenty of opportunity to get acclimated to and at least one work over the Churchill Downs racetrack. But the times they are a changing, at least since Funny Cide shipped to Louisville from New York less than 72 hours prior to his victory in the 2003 Derby.
STICKNEY, Ill. – It has been a long trip for She’s All In, a one-time $15,000 maiden-claimer who romped to victory Saturday at Hawthorne in the Grade 3 Sixty Sails Handicap, winning by almost nine lengths while notching the first graded stakes victory of a 23-race career.
Ramon Dominguez will ride Hansen in the Kentucky Derby, his agent Steve Rushing confirmed Monday afternoon.
Dominguez was the regular of both Hansen, last year’s 2-year-old champion and this year’s Gotham winner, and Alpha, this year’s Count Fleet and Withers winner and Wood Memorial runner-up.
Four of the five horses who survived a harrowing equine van accident last week in South Carolina are now bedded down at the Fair Hill training center in Maryland, with the other one expected to join them later this week.
The horses, all trained by Jimmy Toner, are owned by two partnerships managed by Justin Nicholson. Bold Hawk, an 8-year-old gelding who won the Grade 3 Hawthorne Derby in 2007, and Crying Lightening, a listed stakes winner in Europe who is 0 for 2 in the United States, are both owned by Ninety North Racing Stable, a recently formed public syndicate.
Trainer Linda Rice won five of the last 18 races run at the Aqueduct meet – including the final one with Thisskysabeauty – to win the spring meet trainer’s title, 13-12, over Rudy Rodriguez.
This was Rice’s fourth trainer’s title on the New York Racing Association circuit, second outright. She won the 2010 Saratoga meet, tied David Jacobson for the 2011 Aqueduct spring title, and tied Todd Pletcher for the 2011 Belmont spring/summer title.
ELMONT, N.Y. – Owner Barry Schwartz is leaving the door open for Jerome winner The Lumber Guy to make his next start in the $1 million Preakness Stakes at Pimlico on May 19.
“It’s definitely a possibility,” Schwartz said Monday by phone from Southern California.
The other possibility is the Grade 2, $200,000 Peter Pan, a one-turn 1 1/8-mile race at Belmont Park on May 12.
