A 7-year-old trying to turn back the clock to 2010, when he placed second in a pair of Grade 2 stakes, and a young sprinter, seeking to prove his surprise win in a $75,000 stakes to close out his 3-year-old campaign was no fluke, will start alongside each other in Monday’s featured ninth race at Parx.
The six-furlong sprint, a money allowance carrying a $55,000 purse, drew a field of six older horses.
Here's my race-by-race rundown of Saturday's pick four at Aqueduct. I'm building my wager with TicketMaker, found exclusively on DRF.com.
Trainer Leah Gyarmati’s strong winter continued Friday when Big Brownie, making her first start in nine months, rallied to win the $75,000 Holly Springs Stakes by 1 1/4 lengths over Lady Gracenote. It was a neck back to Saltamontes in third.
Gyarmati ended Friday’s card with 6 wins from 29 starters at the meet. She also has 4 seconds and 5 thirds.
Big Brownie was ridden to victory by Irad Ortiz Jr., his first win as a journeyman rider. He lost his apprentice status following Wednesday’s program.
Soaring Empire earned himself a berth in the Grade 1 Donn Handicap after working an easy five furlongs in 1:01.01 here Friday. Soaring Empire broke off three lengths behind his regular workmate, Le Bon Ton Rule, then gradually wore his target down to finish on even terms while never asked the entire way. Soaring Empire galloped out six furlongs in 1:14.83.
Another player in the older male dirt division is waiting in the Fair Grounds wings. The steady Mister Marti Gras worked five furlongs in 1:01.60 Tuesday morning and is likely to make his first start of 2012 in the Feb. 25 Mineshaft Handicap, trainer Neil Pessin said.
“That’s what we’re aiming for now,” said Pessin, “though we might also enter the Fair Grounds Handicap as well.”
The Fair Grounds Handicap is on turf, and Mister Marti Gras would probably start in that spot only if rain moved the race to dirt.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – After Flying Zee Stable’s Carl Lizza passed away last summer, his wife Viane decided to stay in racing but on a scaled down basis, hand-picking the horses to carry on the stable name. Among that group was Street Game, a Grade 3 winner who launches his 2012 campaign under allowance conditions in Sunday’s $56,500 main event at Gulfstream Park.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Santa Anita will roll out the red carpet Sunday for Game On Dude, the top handicap horse in California and lone speed in the Grade 2 San Antonio Stakes. The San Antonio is race 7, and the fifth leg of the pick six, whch will have a $353,248 carryover following I'll Have Another's $88 victory in Saturday's Robert Lewis Stakes.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – If trainer Rudy Rodriguez gets his way, his undefeated New York-bred sprinting filly Agave Kiss will skip next Saturday’s $75,000 Dearly Precious Stakes at Aqueduct and await the Grade 3 Cicada on March 10.
“I think I’m going to pass the race,’’ Rodriguez, who trains Agave Kiss for Viane Lizza’s Flying Zee Stable, said Friday morning in his barn office at Aqueduct. “She’s good, she’s doing everything we’ve asked her to do, but if it was up to me I don’t want to run. I don’t want to overdo it, I want to try to keep her fresh.”
Everything is swell in the world of the 2011 Horse of the Year. Havre de Grace has settled comfortably into her winter quarters on the Fair Grounds backstretch and has been taking steady steps toward her 2012 debut, trainer Larry Jones said earlier this week.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Success on the hillside turf course at Santa Anita has put trainer Marty Jones’s stable firmly in the top 10 at Santa Anita this winter.
Jones’s stable won three races, including two stakes, in late January and early February on the hillside turf course – the Sensational Star Stakes with Compari on Jan. 28, the Wishing Well Stakes with the remarkable Unzip Me on Jan. 29, and an optional claimer with Don Perico on Thursday. The 3-year-old maiden Zackn’mat won a seven-furlong race on dirt Jan. 29.
