ELMONT, N.Y. - Uncle Mo will have only three horses to beat in Saturday’s Grade 2, $200,000 Kelso Handicap at Belmont Park.
Sangaree, the runner-up in last year’s Grade 1 Triple Bend Handicap at Hollywood Park, will scratch from the Kelso because of a cough.
“He started coughing yesterday, and he continued this morning,” said Rick Mettee, Godolphin’s New York-based assistant trainer. “It’s too bad, because we were looking forward to running him”
OCEANPORT, N.J. – The mighty Secretariat closed out his 2-year-old season with a victory in the Garden State Stakes at the defunct Garden State Park.
The $75,000 juvenile event returns Sunday at Monmouth Park with six entrants, none of whom could be branded a superstar at this point.
All six have won a single race. It could be a compact gathering as two runners, Angel’s Tune and Clip the Coupons, were cross-entered in Sunday’s $150,000 Nashua Stakes at Belmont Park.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia – Class Included is going to be an overlay when she runs in the Grade 3, $100,000 Ballerina for fillies and mares at Hastings on Sunday.
Class Included will offer some value in the 1 1/8-mile feature that drew 12 horses because it will be hard for many people to resist the four-horse Glen Todd-Patrick Kinsella owned entry of Castinette Dancer, Summer Song, Classic Alley Kat, and Dashing Daisy. All four are multiple stakes winners and any of them would attract substantial support on her own.
Queen Greeley has raced more recently than Hayley’s Halo, and that might give her the edge she needs in Sunday’s $60,000 Chaves County at Zia Park to turn the tables on the filly she has chased home four times this year.
“It’s got to be a benefit, but I haven’t beat her yet,” said Todd Fincher, who trains Queen Greely. “We’ll try again.”
Rapid Redux’s quest to catch co-record holders Zenyatta and Peppers Pride has been temporarily put on hold.
Concerned about track conditions at Mountaineer Racetrack, trainer David Wells did not ship Rapid Redux to West Virginia and will scratch the 5-year-old gelding from Friday night’s one-mile starter allowance, where the horse was listed as the 3-5 morning-line favorite in a field of eight.
The 17-day fall meet at Keeneland Race Course will get away to its usual action-packed start Friday when the first two of nine Breeders’ Cup preps begin FallStars Weekend, the three-day run that always defines a front-loaded meet.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Dollars and dreams are at stake Sunday at Santa Anita, where 10 2-year-old fillies with Breeders’ Cup ambitions race 1 1/16 miles in the Grade 1 Oak Leaf Stakes.
Weemissfrankie is the likely favorite, and her trainer, Pete Eurton, will not look beyond this weekend. Dream, yes. Plan ahead, not yet.
“I’m looking at Sunday, and hoping for November,” Eurton said. “Sunday is like a stopover.”
VANCOUVER, British Columbia – With full fields, three stakes races including the $100,000 Premier’s and the Grade 3, $100,000 Ballerina, Russell Baze making an appearance, and a strong contingent of horses and humans from Emerald Downs, Sunday’s final card of the 2011 Hastings meet should be memorable.
The 1 3/8-mile Premier’s, which drew 12-horses, may have lost its Grade 3 designation this year, but it is the gem on the 11-race card.
FORT ERIE, Ontario – Apprentice jockey Janine Smith, 23, has come a long way from her home on tiny Denman Island in the Pacific Ocean to the border oval at Fort Erie.
The island, not far from Vancouver Island, was where Smith had her first lessons in riding. She was 4 years old and sitting on her pony.
