ARCADIA, Calif. – The progress that Eden’s Moon has made at Santa Anita this year has jockey Martin Garcia thinking of glory in the Kentucky Oaks in early May.
“She looks pretty good the way she’s been running,” Garcia said. “We’re praying that she stays sound and keeps improving. She had three starts and I think she will.”
HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – There will be a double Rainbow at Oaklawn Park on Saturday.
Little Bird gets a rematch with Primetime Dreamer in the $60,000 Rainbow for 3-year-olds, while Spadra seeks the second stakes win of her career in the $60,000 Rainbow Miss for 3-year-old fillies. Both races are at six furlongs and restricted to horses bred in Arkansas.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Starlight Magic was sidelined last fall with minor bone chips in an ankle and knee after winning the California Cup Juvenile Fillies at Santa Anita. She picked a good time to be injured.
Five months later, Starlight Magic is ready to resume racing at an ideal time for a 3-year-old California-bred filly. She starts in Saturday’s $200,000 Evening Jewel over 6 1/2 furlongs at Santa Anita, a race that is part of the newly created Golden State Series for statebreds.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Though he is best known for his victory in the Blue Grass Stakes last spring and a subsequent third-place finish in the Belmont Stakes, it is on turf where Brilliant Speed seemed most effective in 2011. He developed steadily all year long, and by the fall was good enough to finish third in the Breeders’ Cup Turf behind two European invaders.
Here's my race-by-race rundown of Saturday's pick five at Gulfstream Park on March 31, 2012. I'm building my wager with TicketMaker, found exclusively on DRF.com.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Opus A, a dominant winner of New York-bred stakes in her last two outings, heads the field Saturday in the $75,000 Plugged Nickle Stakes for fillies and mares at Aqueduct.
The Plugged Nickle is the featured event on the last card of the week at the Big A. The track will be dark Sunday in observance of Palm Sunday.
Opus A, a 5-year-old trained by Rick Violette, is in the best form of her life, and figures to be favored against five rivals in the one-mile race on the main track.
Here's my race-by-race rundown of Sunday's pick four at Fair Grounds. I'm building my wager with TicketMaker, found exclusively on DRF.com.
Slander, a good-looking winner leaving the maiden ranks against $32,000 claimers early in the Tampa Bay meeting, tops an overflow field of fillies and mares on Saturday in what figures to be a highly competitive mile and a sixteenth turf test for $25,000 claiming routers who have not won two races.
From the powerful Leigh Delacour barn, Slander will have Daniel Centeno in the irons as she drops down from an even sixth-place finish in a first-level optional claimer. Slander came into that race, her first try against winners, off a six-week break.
All About Her and Over the Moon, a pair of 4-year-old fillies separated by a length when they met in a first-level allowance four weeks ago, will go head to head again in quest of their first stakes victory in Saturday’s $50,000 Shine Again at Pimlico.
The 1 1/16-mile race, restricted to Maryland-breds who have never won a stakes, launches a 22-stakes package during Pimlico’s 29-day marquee meet that culiminates with the $1 million Preakeness on closing day, May 19.
