HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – Apriority’s mission is clear Saturday in the Grade 3, $250,000 Count Fleet Sprint Handicap at Oaklawn Park. He will have to catch the win-streaking mare Izzy Rules, if he is to deliver as the 118-pound starting highweight.
The Count Fleet, a six-furlong race that drew six older horses, is the first of four stakes that will be run consecutively on the closing-day card. The program has a special first post of noon Central.
AUBURN, Wash. – Saturday’s feature race at Emerald Downs, a 5 1/2-furlong sprint for $15,000 claimers, attracted an evenly matched field of nine older sprinters. Olympic Lights, who has 12 career Emerald victories, figures to be a popular favorite, but with most of the runners coming off extended layoffs, it could be tricky for handicappers to zero in on the winner. The feature is the seventh of eight races on a program that begins at 2 p.m. Pacific.
MIAMI – Trainer Phil Gleaves is hoping a week that started on the lowest of low notes will end on a high one when he sends out Csaba as the likely favorite in Saturday’s $150,000 Calder Derby. A fixture on the local stakes schedule for nearly 40 years, the 1 1/8-mile Calder Derby has been reinstated this season after not being run in 2011.
LEXINGTON, Ky. – A crush of horses bearing down from his outside would be something brand new for Hansen. As fast as he is, the nearly white colt has grown accustomed to free-wheeling out front, and never in his first five races has he encountered any such difficulty.
By the time Tackleberry loaded into the starting gate for last April’s $1 million Charles Town Classic, he had run four times in 2011 and 10 times in 10 months.
After setting the pace in the three-turn race, Tackleberry faded to fourth, four lengths behind fellow Florida-based Duke of Mischief.
Saturday night, when Tackleberry re-loads into the Charles Town starting gate for the Classic, he will be making just his second start in 11 months against a markedly weaker group that includes the off-form Duke of Mischief.[bc_video_id:248933:]
Trainers typically avoid running 3-year-olds against older foes in stakes races until autumn, opting to run them instead in races restricted to their age division. The exceptions come when a 3-year-old has that extra something that suggests they can tackle older foes, or when stakes conditions just fit the 3-year-old too well to give it a pass.
As it applies to Saturday’s $50,000 JEH Stallion Stakes Saturday at Lone Star Park, Nurse Goodnight, a 3-year-old filly, fits both qualifications.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Mario Gutierrez was 17 in 2004 and had just finished high school in Veracruz, Mexico, when he announced his grand career plans to his parents. He wanted to move to Mexico City, and become a jockey.
“I said, ‘Let me try it in Mexico City for a year,’ ” he remembers.
A year, his parents said. Give it a year. If you are not successful, come home and head to college, they said.
After a year, Gutierrez was ready to leave Mexico City, but he went north, all the way to Hastings Park in Vancouver, British Columbia, where he became a leading rider.
LEXINGTON, Ky. – Some fans may raise eyebrows when a horse works a sizzling five furlongs just four days before a 1 1/8-mile race, but it must be remembered that Jonathan Sheppard did not make the Hall of Fame by accident.
The 71-year-old Englishman sent out Ever So Lucky for a 57-second drill Tuesday in preparation for the Blue Grass Stakes on Saturday in a move prompted partly by the way Ever So Lucky, an Indian Charlie colt, has played catch-up all winter.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – While It’s Tricky will be conceding weight to graded stakes winners and turning back in distance in Saturday’s Grade 2, $200,000 Distaff Handicap at Aqueduct, the truth remains she is the class of the field, is training splendidly, and appears to be well drawn for the seven-furlong race.
After deciding between Friday’s Grade 1 Apple Blossom at Oaklawn and the Distaff, the connections of It’s Tricky chose to stay home with their multiple Grade 1-winning filly, who has finished first or second in 9 of her 10 starts.
