OLDSMAR, Fla. – Suzzona, a winner of six of her last eight starts, tops an overflow field of 14 filly and mare turf sprinters entered for Saturday’s opening day feature Tampa Bay Downs, the $75,000 Lightning City Stakes.
Trained by Benny Feliciano Jr., Suzzona has won 22 of 46 lifetime races and has won 11 of her last 18 trips to the post. Winner of last season’s edition of the Lightning City with a late rally, Suzzona has been no worse than third in her last nine outings on the grass.
Santa Anita Park suffered damage to its barn area and canceled simulcast wagering on Thursday after an overnight windstorm struck the area with high winds.
The track was with without electricity as of late morning Thursday. The pre-dawn storm, which was widely forecast, caused the collapse of the exterior walls of at least two stables where trainers Doug O’Neill and Tim Yakteen keep horses. Both trainers reported that their horses and staffs were not injured. O’Neill said he had no horses based at his Santa Anita stable, with his division across town at Hollywood Park.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. – Tres Borrachos was an overlooked 30-1 outsider when he rallied through the Churchill Downs stretch to finish third in the Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile at Churchill Downs on Nov. 5.
There will be no longshot prices when Tres Borrachos starts as the expected favorite in Saturday’s $100,000 Native Diver Handicap at Hollywood Park.
OLDSMAR, Fla. – Tampa Bay Downs, which begins its 86th season of racing Saturday, annually offers offers some of the largest average field sizes in the country and a stakes program highlighted by the Tampa Bay Derby. This year Tampa will add technology to its simulcast feed that will make it easier for fans to follow their selections during a race.
The Gulfstream Park meeting begins Saturday and one Woodbine trainer who will be on hand is Darwin Banach.
Town Prize, the 2-year-old colt whom Banach trains for Bill Sorokolit, is among eight entrants in the $100,000 Spectacular Bid, the opening-day feature at six furlongs.
Bred by Sorokolit in Kentucky, Town Prize sandwiched wins in a maiden race and a first-level allowance sprint around a third-place finish in the Colin Stakes in his three starts at the Woodbine meeting.
Keith Bourgeois won his 2,000th race as a trainer on Wednesday night, when Dynamic Time ($8.40) scored by a nose in the sixth race at Delta Downs in Vinton, La. Bourgeois registered the first win of his career on Oct. 22, 1988, at the now-shuttered Jefferson Downs. Overall, he has had 11,204 starters, who have earned a collective $26,515,591.
Bourgeois has won seven training titles at Delta. He also is a multiple title winner at Evangeline Downs. Bourgeois’s most notable year as a trainer came in 2009, when he ranked 10th in wins in North America with 192.
Dirt has been a foreign surface to Thirtyfirststreet for some time now as he has been racing on either turf or synthetic tracks since March. But that will change Saturday in the $150,000 Zia Park Derby.
Thirtyfirststreet will take on five others in the 1 1/16-mile dirt race at Zia Park in Hobbs, N.M. The stakes is part of a package of four six-figure races that close out Zia’s mixed meet, with the three other stakes to be run on the final card of the season Sunday.
PHOENIX – A couple of the top Arizona sprinters, Trip the General and Bonboni, must deal with Southern California raider Earnednevergiven in Saturday’s $35,000 Caballos del Sol at Turf Paradise. A field of eight is entered for the six-furlong event.
Trainer Jerry Hollendorfer sends out three of the six 2-year-old fillies in Saturday’s $75,000 Corte Madera Stakes at Golden Gate Fields, a race that should start to separate the sprinters from the routers among those being pointed for the Jan. 21 California Oaks.
A one-mile race on Tapeta, the Corte Madera follows the six-furlong Golden Gate Debutante in Golden Gate’s series for fillies foaled in 2009, culminating in the 1 1/16-mile Oaks.
