INGLEWOOD, Calif. – Facing a top-class field of East Coast shippers, a local turf filly stole the show Friday in the Grade 1 Matriarch Stakes at Hollywood Park.
California-based Star Billing and jockey Victor Espinoza rallied past a good field of shippers to post a $23.40 upset in the one-mile stakes, giving trainer John Shirreffs his third win on the card and validating owner-breeder George Krikorian’s confidence.
Steal Your Face won the $50,000 Silver Goblin for the second time in three years on Friday, when he edged Gleaming by a neck in the Oklahoma-bred stakes that highlighted a special afternoon card at Remington Park.
Steal Your Face’s first win in the 6 1/2- furlong sprint came by a nose in 2009.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – They can’t take this one away from them. Owner Morton Fink and trainer Charlie Lopresti thought they had won the Clark Handicap last year when Successful Dan crossed under the wire first, but a disqualification left them quite unhappy.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. – A good week for Ramon Dominguez keeps getting better.
One day after riding five winners at Aqueduct, the East Coast-based jockey won the first stakes of the 2011 Turf Festival at Hollywood Park, guiding even-money favorite More Than Love ($4) to a nose victory over stubborn pacesetter Starship Flare in the Grade 3 Miesque Stakes.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. - Mike Hushion's extended holiday weekend got even better Friday as Lovely Lil, dismissed at 15-1 by the betting public, scored a front-running, 1 1/4-length victory in Friday's Grade 2, $150,000 Go for Wand Handicap at Aqueduct.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Barns 2 and 14 at Belmont Park are directly across from one another, separated by approximately 25 feet of pavement. The atmosphere at each of those barns on Friday morning was on opposite ends of the spectrum.
Barn 2 is home to Andrew Lakeman, who on Thursday won his first race as a trainer, 4 1/2 years after his riding career ended in a spill at Belmont Park, leaving him paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair. Lakeman won Thursday’s last race, a $25,000 maiden claiming race, with Thisskysabeauty.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. – A neck victory by Muny in the third race Thursday at Hollywood Park made Mike Mitchell the track’s second-leading trainer all time. The win by $40,000 claimer Muny was No. 860 for Mitchell at Hollywood as he passed Charlie Whittingham’s 859.
Mitchell remains a distant second behind the late Bobby Frankel, who won 952 races at Hollywood.
“That just goes to show what a great trainer Bobby was, he’s still [almost] 100 in front,” Mitchell said. “He owned this place.”
MIAMI – Trainer Bill Kaplan lost his original option for the 2012 debut of Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint winner Musical Romance’ when the Sunshine Millions Filly and Mare Sprint was recently transferred from Santa Anita to Gulfstream Park. But Kaplan is still considering sending Musical Romance west for her next start in Santa Anita’s Grade 1 Santa Monica Stakes on Jan. 28.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – The curtain comes down Sunday on the Churchill Downs fall meet, even if Bill Mott doesn’t want it to. More than $4.1 million in stable earnings in less than a month isn’t bad, even for a trainer who already had pretty much everything, including a Hall of Fame bust. In fact it’s awfully good work if you can get it, and even if you outsource it, so to speak.
