GROVE CITY, Ohio – Beulah Park opens for the 88th year Monday with a carryover in its 50-cent pick five. The 70-day Beulah season will run through Kentucky Derby Day, May 5.
There is a carryover of over $8,275 coming into the Monday’s card. Management received permission from the Ohio Racing Commission to keep the carryover alive rather than to distribute it on Dec. 21, closing day of the fall/winter meet.
ARCADIA, Calif. - Turbulent Descent, the winner of two Grade 1 races last year but the beaten favorite in the Grade 1 La Brea Stakes on Dec. 31, was sent to Magali Farms in Santa Ynez, Calif., on Friday for a 60-day rest.
Trainer Mike Puype said on Friday that Turbulent Descent will be pointed for a campaign in the second half of 2012 upon her return.
ARCADIA, Calif. - Ismene, the undefeated winner of two stakes, will be sidelined until the summer after recently undergoing surgery to have a bone chip removed from a knee, trainer Bill Spawr said.
The surgery was conducted last week, having been diagnosed in the days after Ismene’s win in the fillies division of the California Breeders’ Champion Stakes over seven furlongs at Santa Anita on Dec. 26.
“She’ll need 90 days off and she can come back,” Spawr said. “She’ll run at Del Mar.”
Junior Alvarado, the leading rider through the first month of racing over the inner track, escaped serious injury after he was unseated from his mount in Friday’s fourth race.
According to Alvarado’s agent, Mike Sellitto, Alvarado needed just one stitch in his lip and had a bruised buttocks as a result of being unseated from Miss Dragon Lady, who clipped heels with Eva Lil down the backstretch run of the fourth race. Alvarado hit the ground hard and appeared to get stepped on by his own horse, though Sellitto said Alvarado told him that wasn’t the case.
Heart Butte, who returned from nearly a year-long layoff to win a stakes at Parx Racing on Dec. 31, will be pointed to a defense of his Evening Attire Stakes title when that race is run here Jan. 21.
Heart Butte, trained by Todd Pletcher, won last year’s Evening Attire, but went to the sidelines for more than 11 months. He returned in the Auld Lang Syne Stakes at Parx on Dec. 31, where he won a nose decision over Thunder Lord. Heart Butte has now won four consecutive races dating back to Nov. 7, 2010.
OZONE PARK, N.Y – Trainer Bisnath Parboo has shipped a small string of horses to New York from south Florida, and if Thursday was any indication, he should be taken seriously here this winter.
Parboo ran second at Aqueduct on Thursday with both Nick Rules and Off the Jak, the latter getting beat a nose by Wee Freudian in a starter allowance. Parboo also had two horses scheduled to start Saturday.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – On Feb. 4, Aqueduct will host the Grade 3, $150,000 Toboggan Stakes. Sunday’s $75,000 Rise Jim Stakes figures to offer a preview at half the purse.
Six stakes winners comprise the seven-horse field in the six-furlong Rise Jim field, led by J J’s Lucky Train, who returns to Aqueduct where last April he won the Grade 3 Bay Shore Stakes over the main track. J J’s Lucky Train is winless in five starts since, most coming in races at distances beyond his best.
The Santa Anita main track underwent maintenance to add material earlier this week and will undergo further work to prevent compaction in coming days.
A weekly meeting between members of the California Thoroughbred Trainers and track maintenance officials on Thursday included a discussion on the work being done on the track, according to CTT president John Sadler.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Acclamation, a finalist for Eclipse Awards as the nation’s outstanding turf male and outstanding older male, has resumed light training at Santa Anita with an expected return to racing in the spring.
Trainer Don Warren said Acclamation jogged for a week in late December and was being walked at his stable this week, with a mix of jogging and walking expected in coming weeks. A winner of three Grade 1 races in 2011, Acclamation could start his 2012 campaign before the end of the current Santa Anita winter-spring meeting on April 22.
