The versatile C.C.’s Pal, a stakes winner at distances from six furlongs to 1 1/8 miles, heads a field of nine fillies and mares entered in Saturday’s Grade 2, $200,000 Barbara Fritchie Handicap at Laurel Park.
C.C.’s Pal, trained by Richard Dutrow Jr., drew post 3 in the field of nine fillies and mares set to run seven furlongs. The Fritchie tops a nine-race card that also includes the $100,000 John B. Campbell Handicap for older males at 1 1/8 miles.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Lady Rizzi may have lost a step or two over the years and is pretty one-dimensional when it comes to her best game, but the 9-year-old mare is still good enough to hold her own against top-caliber competition any time trainer Linda Rice sends her out to run five furlongs over the turf.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – What a difference a furlong makes.
The $75,000 Stymie, on the stakes calendar since 1956 and run at 1 1/8 miles since Canonero II won it in 1972, was not carded as scheduled for Saturday. The primary reason was the distance.
Replacing the Stymie as the feature on Saturday is the $75,000 As Indicated, which will go at one mile. The As Indicated was initially scheduled for Thursday.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Animal Kingdom’s return to the races on Saturday at Gulfstream Park will take some of the spotlight away from the day’s feature event, the Grade 2 Gulfstream Park Sprint Championship. The seven-furlong GP Sprint drew a field of eight topped by Force Freeze, runner-up behind Eclipse Award winner Amazombie in the 2011 Breeders’ Cup Sprint.
Force Freeze will break from the extreme outside with jockey Paco Lopez back aboard. Lopez was replaced by John Velazquez in the Breeders’ Cup.
STICKNEY, Ill – There’s a lot riding on the 2012 winter-spring meet that begins Friday at Hawthorne Race Course. Everything, perhaps.
The 2011 spring meet here paid out average daily purses of just $119,000, a pittance in today’s slots-fueled racing world. Field size was dismal, the weather was bad, and handle lacked luster. At the annual Illinois Racing Board dates awards meeting last summer, the viability of a winter-spring meet in Chicago, which Hawthorne inherited when neighboring Sportsman’s Park went belly-up, was openly questioned.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Frumious, winner of the Grade 2 Palos Verdes Stakes last month, will miss an intended start in the $2 million Golden Shaheen Sprint on March 31 in Dubai after suffering a recent injury, trainer Jeff Bonde said.
The injury was detected after Frumious worked a half-mile in 46.80 seconds at Hollywood Park on Feb. 2, Bonde said. He did not elaborate on the nature of the injury, other than to say that the 6-year-old gelding “aggravated himself.”
“He’ll take a little break,” Bonde said.”I think he’ll be off for 60 days. We won’t see him until later this year.”
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – This Ones for Phil may not be the same horse he was in his youth, when he took the Grade 2 Swale and back-to-back runnings of the Sunshine Millions Sprint.
But if the gelding, now 6 years old, can run the race back that he did last month winning an optional claimer over the inner track, that could be good enough to win a high-priced claimer that serves as the Friday feature on Aqueduct’s nine-race card.
It’s usually the first question anyone asks Lynn Whiting when they meet him and find out he’s a racehorse trainer: “Have you ever won the Kentucky Derby?” Fortunately, he can answer yes.
Twenty years ago, Whiting achieved the dream of every trainer when he won the Derby, with the longshot Lil E. Tee, who gave another local favorite of Kentucky, Hall of Fame jockey Pat Day, his lone win in America’s greatest race. Day has long since retired, but Whiting, now 72, is still making the rounds at the barn, every morning.
ARCADIA, Calif. – It is the last Saturday in March that has become the immediate springtime focus for the owners and trainers of California-bred 3-year-olds.
The March 31 program at Santa Anita includes the first running of the $200,000 Echo Eddie Stakes for California-bred 3-year-olds over 6 1/2 furlongs, a race that is part of the newly formed Golden State Series.
“It’s definitely on our calendar,” trainer Tim Yakteen said.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. - Last year it was Uncle Mo. This winter it will be Animal Kingdom who will use a race at Gulfstream Park as a prep for his first major goal of the season when Animal Kingdom, winner of the Kentucky Derby and Eclipse Award as top 3-year-old male, launches his 2012 campaign in a 1 1/16-mile optional claiming and allowance event over the turf here Saturday. Trainer Graham Motion is pointing Animal Kingdom for the $10 million Dubai World Cup on March 31.
