[bc_video_id:243348:]Empire Way, a 3-year-old full brother to the 2011 champion 3-year-old filly Royal Delta, may be slightly overlooked in Saturday’s $200,000 Robert Lewis Stakes.
With Liaison and Rousing Sermon, the first two finishers of the Grade 1 CashCall Futurity at Hollywood Park last month in the field, Empire Way will be a longshot. Fifth in the CashCall Futurity, Empire Way has drawn post 7 in a field of eight, leaving trainer Mike Harrington confident that an upset is possible.
By now, one would think, Star Guitar should have scared the competition away from Louisiana-bred dirt-route stakes. He has won the last six such stakes for older horses and has been defeated only twice in 21 races of the statebred-restricted variety. But the lure of second-money in a $200,000 race has drawn rivals out of the woodwork, with nine set to line up against the Louisiana kingpin Saturday night at Delta Downs in the Premier Night Championship, a race Star Guitar has won three years in a row.
OLDSMAR, Fla. – Could the 2012 Queen’s Plate winner be running Saturday in the $150,000 Florida Oaks at Tampa Bay Downs?
Trainer Make Casse will send out a pair of talented fillies owned by John Oxley in Dixie Strike and Northern Passion, and while the trainer thinks both individuals have bright futures, he is high enough in his praise for Dixie Strike, a half-sister to 2011 Queen’s Plate winner Inglorious, to suggest she could win Canada’s biggest 3-year-old race of the season.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – With Uncle Mo retired and Stay Thirsty still vacationing, things have been a little quiet in Mike Repole’s Thoroughbred world these days.
That could change Saturday when Repole’s pair of graded stakes winners Calibrachoa and Caixa Eletronica comprise a formidable entry in the Grade 3, $150,000 Toboggan Stakes going six furlongs over Aqueduct’s inner track.
The Repole/Todd Pletcher-trained entry figures to go favored over the Michael Dubb-owned entry of Candyman E and Flat Bold in the eight-horse Toboggan.
HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – Alternation established himself as a quality 3-year-old last year when he won the Grade 2 Peter Pan at Belmont Park. But there have long been reasons to believe he would be a better horse at 4, and the time has come to put that theory to the test.
Zagora holds a special place in trainer Chad Brown’s heart, having provided him with the first Grade 1 win of his career when she upset the 2011 Diana at Saratoga. On Saturday, Brown hopes Zagora will take her first step towards possibly an even bigger milestone, a Breeders’ Cup victory, when she launches her 2012 campaign in the Grade 3, $150,000 Endeavour Stakes at Tampa Bay Downs.
Liaison is not the typical offspring of Indian Charlie, says someone who should know, Bob Baffert, who trained Indian Charlie and now has Liaison. And while that might not have made Liaison the most precocious of runners, it may serve him well in the long run. And the runs for Liaison are going to get longer in the next few months.
Prospective will attempt to continue his run through Tampa Bay Downs’s trio of Kentucky Derby preps when he tries to add Saturday’s $250,000 Sam F. Davis Stakes to his impressive victory in the seven-furlong Pasco three weeks earlier.
Prospective tops a field of 11 3-year-olds entered in the 1 1/16-mile, Grade 3 Sam F. Davis, which serves as the final major prep for the track’s marquee event, the Grade 2 Tampa Bay Derby on March 10.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Setsuko made a career of running well, but not winning, top races as a 3- and 4-year-old. Among his five stakes placings, Setsuko was second in the 2010 Santa Anita Derby and second in a roughly-run Santa Anita Handicap last year.
After a last-place finish in the Pacific Classic at Del Mar last summer, owner Alain Wertheimer and trainer Richard Mandella decided to geld Setsuko, after one victory in 16 career starts.
Hunches aside, the WEBN Stakes should go to a horse more apt to advance along Turfway Park’s little north fork of the Kentucky Derby trail than Frankie Is Rock. Although the colt is a natural play in a race long sponsored by the Cincinnati rock-music radio station (102.7 FM), the favorite’s roles should be filled by an uncoupled duo of 3-year-olds from the Mike Maker stable.
