INGLEWOOD, Calif. – Seven furlongs is three furlongs short of the spring goal, yet it is an ideal launch distance for Kentucky Derby prospects trained by Mike Harrington and owned by Heinz Steinmann.
Empire Way races seven furlongs Thursday in the $100,000 Prevue at Hollywood Park, where a $62,889 pick six carryover is at stake. Creative Cause will return in a seven-furlong race in February at Santa Anita as Harrington points both 2-year-old colts toward ambitious objectives.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Todd Pletcher would like to see Super Espresso bow out the right way, and that would be by running the way she did six months ago on the Preakness undercard at Pimlico. Super Espresso is the co-highweight Thursday in the Grade 2, $175,000 Falls City Handicap at Churchill Downs.
“This is her last race,” Pletcher said. “We haven’t quite been able to get her to recapture that form she showed when she won the Allaire DuPont on Preakness Day, but she hasn’t embarrassed us, either. She’s been a consistent mare, and we’ve tried some ambitious spots with her.”
INGLEWOOD, Calif. – Rustin Kretz was surveying the atmosphere at Churchill Downs on Kentucky Derby Day in 2010 when he turned to his wife, Juliana, and told her of his plans when they returned home to California.
“I have to own a racehorse,” he said.
The idea was not a passing fancy. In the following weeks, Kretz’s thoughts continually returned to Thoroughbred racing.
“I couldn’t get the idea out of my head,” he said last weekend. “We thought the whole thing was amazing.”
In an era when many top runners are retired after their 3-year-old years, Bold Chieftain is still racing at the stakes level as an 8-year-old, and a victory in Friday’s Grade 3 All American at Golden Gate Fields would put a cap on a remarkable career.
The $100,000 All American will either be Bold Chieftain’s penultimate or final start before he begins his stud career at Ellen Jackson’s Victory Rose Thoroughbreds in 2012.
MIAMI – The filly and mare turf division was a wide open one this year as evidenced by longshot Perfect Shirl’s victory in the Breeders’ Cup and the lingering uncertainty over who will end up with the Eclipse Award in the category.
ETOBICOKE, Ontario – Miss Scarlett Road gets some big-time class relief in Thursday’s Woodbine headliner, and she might not even be the favorite in the allowance sprint for Ontario-sired 2-year-old fillies.
Miss Scarlett Road was bet down to 2-1 when she debuted in a restricted five-furlong maiden special Oct. 19. After tracking the leaders along the inside, she took control early in the stretch and then drew clear for a three-length triumph while earning a respectable 62 Beyer Speed Figure.
The only tension in Rapid Redux’s record-setting win on a wet Monday night at Mountaineer Racetrack came before the race even began. Balky and lashing out with his hind legs, Rapid Redux declined to be led into his starting stall for the eighth race, where he was the 1-9 favorite and, for a moment, the focal point of the racing world. The starting gate crew, exercising patience, opened the front doors of the stall, and after one more mule kick, Rapid Redux went in.
A West Virginia court has ruled that a group of jockeys who were suspended by the state's racing commission and barred by Charles Town Races had the right to return to the racetrack after an appeals court granted an injunction of the bans.
November 9 - December 18
