ETOBICOKE, Ontario – It has been a solid season for the Reade Baker stable, which had recorded 48 wins and purse money of more than $2.5 million heading into the final six weeks of the meeting.
“I’m very happy with our year, and we’ll have a strong finish if our races go,” said Baker,
“I had an overwhelming number of 2-year-olds with bucked shins. That was the only thing that slowed us up. I’ll have seven or eight ready to run in the last week, but are there going to be races for them?”
LEXINGTON, Ky. – Sea Level Drive ran so well in finishing second to Marketing Mix in the Grade 3 Pucker Up at Arlington Park that the filly was invited by Keeneland to start in the Grade 1 Queen Elizabeth II Challenge Cup, an Oct. 15 race in which Marketing Mix wound up finishing second to Together.
“But we turned down the invitation to run her in the Valley View” six days later, trainer Rusty Arnold said. “That didn’t work out, because we got excluded. It’s been a funny month for the filly.”
Now that Haynesfield has returned to form, his connections may be eyeing a return to Grade 1 competition for his next start.
With limited options remaining this year, Haynesfield is likely to make his next start in the Grade 1 Cigar Mile at Aqueduct on Nov. 26. Nothing has been specifically picked out, assistant trainer Toby Sheets said Monday, but he called the Cigar Mile “a logical spot.”
Russell Baze took off most of his mounts Friday and Saturday at Golden Gate Fields and did not ride Sunday because of back spasms.
Baze won with Magic Spirit in the first race Friday but took off the rest of his mounts after finishing fifth aboard Dashingly in the fourth race. He rode only one race Saturday, with Five a Day, who finished seventh in the fourth race.
Baze was schedule to undergo an MRI early in the week to try to determine the cause of the spasms.
LEXINGTON, Ky – The daily workout reports for the 2011 Breeders’ Cup began Sunday at Churchill Downs and will continue through Thursday, Nov. 3. The action quickly shifted into high gear Monday morning at Keeneland, where one of the year’s best stories, Havre de Grace, worked five furlongs as a prelude to her battle against the boys in the Classic just 12 days down the road.
Trainer Chad Brown said Monday that he pre-entered four horses for this year’s Breeders’ Cup, but the undefeated Awesome Feather, last year’s year champion 2-year-old filly, was not one of them.
Brown said in the end he and owner Frank Stronach felt that running in the Ladies’ Classic off one race in a year was asking too much. Instead, Awesome Feather will train up to the Grade 1 Gazelle at Aqueduct on Nov. 26.
Awesome Feather won the Le Slew Stakes on Oct. 5, her first start since winning the BC Juvenile Fillies at Churchill Downs last year for previous connections.
LEXINGTON, Ky. – Havre de Grace, the leading lady of the 2011 Breeders’ Cup, worked five furlongs in 58.57 seconds over the very glib Polytrack surface Monday morning at Keeneland in her penultimate work prior to her appearance in the Breeders’ Cup Classic on Nov. 5.
ELMONT, N.Y. – Claiming Crown or Breeders’ Cup?
It’s not a question connections often have to wrestle with, but owner Thomas La Marca and trainer Bruce Brown spent the better part of Sunday and Monday debating the subject as it pertains to their 5-year-old New York-bred Compliance Officer, who won his fifth consecutive race in Saturday’s $125,000 Mohawk at Belmont Park.
