The richest race run each year at Evangeline Downs goes Saturday night, when nine 2-year-olds face off in the $517,844 Louisiana Quarter Horse Breeders Association Futurity. The 400-yard race is a restricted Grade 1 and it anchors a program of four stakes that includes a $91,384 consolation for the LQHBA. There also are two divisions of the $50,000 Evangeline Downs Derby.
Valid A.J. will finally shake the undefeated Now I Know on Saturday night when she runs in the $50,000 Oklahoma Stallion Stakes for 2-year-old fillies at Remington Park. Her nemesis will be at Delta Downs to compete in the Grade 3, $500,000 Princess.
Uncle Virgil will try to replicate his maiden win when taking on nine other Ohio-accredited 2-year-olds in the $50,000 Ohio Freshman at Beulah Park on Saturday.
Trained by Kathy Lowry, Uncle Virgil won his debut locally Nov. 5 by 8 1/4 lengths when ridden out to the wire. That event was at the same six-furlong distance as the Ohio Freshman, and Uncle Virgil earned a Beyer Speed Figure of 59, at least 14 points higher than his nearest rival’s lifetime best.
ETOBICOKE, Ontario — Paso Doble thrust himself into the Sovereign Award picture for champion sprinter with a decisive victory in the allowance prep for the Grade 3 Kennedy Road Stakes. He will contest the $150,000 Kennedy Road on Saturday at Woodbine, a six-furlong sprint that could have significant Sovereign Award implications.
Glenwood Canyon might get some fractions he can sink his teeth into Saturday when he faces a pair of swift Southern California shippers and a Kentucky-based front-runner in the $125,000 Delta Mile at Delta Downs in Vinton, La.
“One target after another is good for him,” said Al Stall Jr., who trains Glenwood Canyon for Columbine Stable.
Candrea did the hard work in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies when she made the fractions before tiring to finish 11th. On Saturday, somebody else might be setting the table for Candrea, who could get an ideal tracking trip in the Grade 3, $500,000 Delta Downs Princess, a one-mile race for 2-year-old fillies that is part of an eight-stakes package at Delta Downs in Vinton, La.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – If pace really makes the race, the two highweights in the River City Handicap should be just fine.
Speed seems to abound in the Grade 3, $100,000 River City, which drew a field of eight older horses and will be run at 1 1/8 miles Saturday on the Churchill Downs turf. On paper, anyway, that should set things up for stretch-runners Tajaaweed, the 119-pound topweight, or Blues Street, 116.
Freaky, the 2009 Quarter Horse World Champion, is the most prominent of 14 entrants in two time trials on Saturday that will complete the field for the $750,000 Champion of Champions at Los Alamitos on Dec. 10.
But the 6-year-old Freaky will start after a recent controversy.
Freaky won the Grade 1 Go Man Go Handicap at Los Alamitos on Sept. 11 for his first major win of 2011, but was subsequently disqualified for testing in excess of the permitted level of the bronchial dilator clenbuterol.
PHOENIX – Forest Mouse’s dominance on the Turf Paradise grass course got knocked back a bit when he took his perfect 3-for-3 mark into the Oct. 29 Walter R. Cluer Memorial at the Phoenix track only to finish fourth. He looks to re-establish himself in Saturday’s $35,000 Jack Coady Sr., a one-mile grass event for 3-year-olds that drew a field of eight.
Earlier on the card, seven 3-year-old fillies will knock heads going a mile on grass in the $35,000 Chandler Stakes.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. – The 2012 season essentially starts on Saturday for Sanagas, the 5-year-old gelding who makes his Grade 1 debut in the $250,000 Hollywood Turf Cup at Hollywood Park.
Trainer Graham Motion has shipped Sanagas from his base in Maryland to California with the expectation that the Turf Cup can be the end of a season that already includes two stakes wins. A victory on Saturday would raise Sanagas’s presence in a national turf division desperately in need of quality and consistent performers.
