ARCADIA, Calif. – Overnight purses at the upcoming Hollywood Park fall meeting are set to rise compared to the corresponding meeting last year, but will be lower than prize money at the track’s spring-summer meeting earlier this year.
The fall meeting begins Thursday and continues through Dec. 18.
Overnight purses have been hiked across the board, with claiming horses the beneficiary of the most substantial increases. For example, a $32,000 claiming race for fillies and mares over a mile on turf will be worth $34,000, $8,000 more than last fall.
Shared Account, a 5-year-old mare trained by Graham Motion, is still scheduled to run in the Breeders' Cup Filly and Mare Turf at Churchill Downs on Friday, even though she was erroneously listed as scratched from the race early in the afternoon by Equibase, which collects and distributes the racing industry's data.
The scratch was corrected at 1:47 p.m. Eastern, 20 minutes after it was first announced, according to Equibase's scratch sheet for Churchill. Post time for the Filly and Mare Turf, the ninth of 10 races on Churchill's Friday card, is scheduled for 6:50 p.m. Eastern.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Norvsky’s win in the California Cup Classic at Santa Anita on Oct. 29 will lead to a start in a graded stakes at Hollywood Park later this month. He will not be alone as a Cal Cup stakes winner bound for a major race in coming weeks.
Norvsky won the richest race of his career in the $175,000 Cal Cup Classic over 1 1/8 miles on turf, prevailing by a neck over Lucky Primo in the richest race of the day.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Daylight savings time is over, a fortuitous development for handicappers hung over from a two-day Breeders’ Cup, and still with six more stakes to tackle on Aqueduct’s Sunday program.
Five $60,000 overnight stakes, two originally scheduled for last Sunday’s cancelled Belmont card, surround a redo of the Grade 3, $100,000 Bold Ruler Handicap, which was wiped out by last Saturday’s freak nor’easter.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Malibu Pier would be easy to support Sunday at Santa Anita, if trainer Carla Gaines had an alibi for the filly’s recent eighth-place finish.
“I don’t,” Gaines said. “I have no explanation.”
Malibu Pier finished eighth in the Grade 1 Yellow Ribbon, and plans were canceled for the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Turf.
“Off that performance, we decided to keep her here instead of going to Kentucky,” Gaines said.
ETOBICOKE, Ontario – Trainer John Cardella has silenced the skeptics before, when his $40,000 claim Bompago went on to win the 1 1/4-mile Queen’s Plate here in 1983.
On Sunday, Cardella will be looking to transform another former claimer into a major stakes winner when Solo Player starts in the $250,000 Coronation Futurity at 1 1/8 miles.
“People will say, ‘Can he go a mile and an eighth?’ ” said Cardella, who has been training since 1964 and is still going strong at age 80 with a 12-horse outfit.
ETOBICOKE, Ontario — Does anybody really want to win the $250,000 Coronation Futurity? Sure, the money’s good, but Woodbine’s co-richest stakes for 2-year-olds hasn’t produced a high-class winner since A Bit O’Gold in 2003. And the last horse to capture the nine-furlong race, along with the following year’s Queen’s Plate, was Norcliffe in 1975-76.
Menlo Castle should be prominent in the 108th running of Coronation on Sunday. He took the 6 1/2-furlong Simcoe Stakes convincingly, with an 87 Beyer Speed Figure, on Sept. 5.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - The fireworks from Thursday morning, when cancellation of turf training because of rain led to a showdown between overseas horsemen and Churchill Downs personnel, gave way to a more civilized Friday, with the grass course back open and everyone making nice.
“Yesterday was yesterday, and now we must go forward,” said trainer Michael Stoute, who was at the heart of the Thursday argument because Sea Moon, his BC Turf starter, was supposed to work on grass Thursday.
It has taken a year for Flying Fig to regain the form that led to her title as the champion Quarter Horse 2-year-old filly of 2010.
In time trials on Oct. 15 for Sunday’s $987,350 Los Alamitos Super Derby, Flying Fig set the second-fastest qualifying time with her first victory of 2011. The win, which came in Flying Fig’s second start of 2011, left trainer Dennis Ekins confident that the filly can win Sunday’s Grade 1 race over 400 yards.
