Here's my rundown for the Pick 6 at Santa Anita on California Cup Day:
ROUSING SERMON (4) finished just behind CHAMPIONS GATE (9) in the I'm Smokin at Del Mar but gets much the better of the draw and has worked smartly for this. CHAMPIONS GATE certainly showed talent at DMR with a big debut win and fine second in the I’m Smokin, where he edged the top pick. He’s bred to this but got stuck with a tough far outside draw.
Spit Curl Diva was overmatched when she ran in the 2010 Champion of Champions at Los Alamitos, the Quarter Horse mare’s first trip to California from the Midwest.
“She’d never been on the track before, but we had to give the Champion of Champions a shot,” co-owner Tom Lepic said Wednesday.
ETOBICOKE, Ontario – Blue Heart will stake her claim for the Sovereign Award as champion 2-year-old filly while trying to remain unbeaten in Saturday’s $250,000 Princess Elizabeth Stakes at Woodbine. Post time for the first of nine races is 12:30 p.m.
Blue Heart, a $375,000 yearling purchase, notched her debut in a six-furlong maiden special Aug. 20. She never saw action again until Oct. 8, when she polished off a good field over 1 1/16 miles in the Mazarine Stakes.
Trainer Brian Lynch said he was concerned when Blue Heart drew post 12 in the $232,600 Mazarine.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia – Longtime Hastings employee Pete Hodge died at Langley Memorial Hospital Monday. Hodge had been fighting cancer for the past 18 months.
Hodge, 67, was the clerk of the scales and stall superintendent at Hastings. His first job at Hastings in 1981 was on the starting gate and he also did a stint as the custodian of the jockeys’ room.
Perfect Shirl, who has been pre-entered in the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Turf, breezed five furlongs in 1:01.40 on the main track here at Woodbine on Thursday morning for trainer Roger Attfield.
Patrick Husbands was aboard Perfect Shirl, who worked in company with 3-year-old stablemate Smart Penny, who had Tyler Pizarro in the irons.
Perfect Shirl, runner-up in the Canadian, would need three defections to make the 14-horse field for the Filly and Mare Turf but three of the horses in the main body of the field have listed the Breeders’ Cup Turf as their first preference.
GROVE CITY, Ohio – Honey Be Fleet will try to turn the tables on Pay the Man in the $50,000 Scarlet and Gray Handicap at Beulah Park on Saturday.
Trained by Doug Cowans, Honey Be Fleet has lost only once locally and just once at the six-furlong distance of the Scarlet and Gray, both in this same event last season. She has won 5 of 6 at this distance lifetime and 2 of 3 local starts.
Pay the Man held on to win the 2010 running by a neck over Honey Be Fleet.
OCEANPORT, N.J. – The two $60,000 divisions of the Jersey Juvenile are the annual showcase for the leading 2-year-olds bred in the Garden State.
The pair of six-furlong races on Saturday are also the final stakes of the year at Monmouth Park.
Foal crops have been on the decline in New Jersey due to the uncertainty surrounding racing schedules and purse levels. The impact can be seen in this year’s Juvenile, where the filly division attracted only five runners while the open division has a field of seven.
PHOENIX – Forest Mouse, an impressive recent winner on grass at Turf Paradise and 3 for 3 overall on the Phoenix sod, knocks heads with last year’s horse of the meet All Saint as a field of 12 is entered for Saturday’s $35,000 Walter R. Cluer Memorial. The race, named for the track’s founder, is at a mile on the turf and goes as race 8.
ETOBICOKE, Ontario — Magic Broomstick had been under consideration for the Grade 1 E.P. Taylor, the $1 million stakes for fillies and mares which was run here at Woodbine on Oct. 16. But trainer Mark Frostad elected to keep Magic Broomstick grounded that afternoon with an eye toward Saturday’s $100,000 River Memories.
The River Memories, an overnight stakes for fillies and mares, and the last turf stakes for the division this season, attracted a field of seven and Magic Broomstick is the probable favorite.
