ETOBICOKE, Ontario – Casa Loma made quite a splash when she graduated second time out at 76-1. She should be favored in her third start in Thursday’s Woodbine headliner, a seven-furlong allowance for 2-year-old fillies that will kick off the eight-race card.
Casa Loma, who’s named after a well-known Toronto castle, was never in contention before ending up a distant ninth in her debut in an Aug. 6 maiden special.
Delaware Park in Wilmington, Del., has canceled its Wednesday race card, citing "insufficient entries," the track said on Tuesday.
The cancelation is the fourth for Delaware Park since its meet began on April 30, including two days lost to Hurricane Irene in late August. Delaware also canceled a card in May when it could not attract enough horses to fill nine races.
Tizway returned to the work tab Tuesday morning at Saratoga, but he is not returning to the Jockey Club Gold Cup field.
After missing a workout last week due to a temperature, Tizway breezed five furlongs in 1:01.44 over the Oklahoma training track Tuesday morning. Saratoga clockers caught Tizway in fractions of 13.20 seconds, 25.20, and 37.20. He galloped out six furlongs in 1:15.40.
ARCADIA, Calif. - Coil, the winner of the Grade 1 Haskell at Monmouth in July, will make his stakes debut against older horses in Saturday’s Grade 1, $250,000 Goodwood Stakes at Santa Anita, trainer Bob Baffert said Tuesday.
Baffert had also considered the Indiana Derby at Hoosier Park on Saturday for Coil, but decided to keep the colt at his base in California.
A winner of 4 of 7 starts and $752,560, Coil was last of 10 in the Travers Stakes at Saratoga on Aug. 27, the 3-year-old’s most recent start.
ELMONT, N.Y. – Peter Walder would have been content to wait until the Breeders’ Cup Sprint to find out just how good a horse he had in Force Freeze. But when a stakes failed to fill at Monmouth Park on Labor Day, Walder needed a race to prepare Force Freeze for the Sprint.
With limited options, he chose Saturday’s Vosburgh, which could come up the best race on the card with as many as 11 horses pointing to it, including defending sprint champion Big Drama.
ELMONT, N.Y. – Though he has competed in 22 consecutive editions of the Breeders’ Cup, trainer Bill Mott broke a 12-year winless drought in the championship series when Unrivaled Belle captured last year’s Ladies’ Classic.
“They’re hard to win,” Mott said. “You’ve got to come loaded, you’ve got to come with good horses, the timing has to be right.”
There’s probably no way that Saturday’s $750,000 Fitz Dixon Cotillion Stakes can live up to the race’s 2010 edition, but that’s all right, because there have not been many rivalries in the modern history of Thoroughbred racing to match the one 4-year-old fillies Blind Luck and Havre de Grace have going. Last year’s Cotillion marked the third race in which that epic duo met, and when Havre de Grace prevailed by a neck, it was the first time she had taken the measure of Blind Luck.
AUBURN, Wash. – Emerald Downs put the finishing touches on its 16th season Sunday with attendance up sharply and betting handle down slightly. The average daily handle of $1,171,731 was off 1.1 percent from the previous season, track officials said, while attendance increased by more than 10 percent. Total handle for the 82-day meeting was more than $96 million.
ELMONT, N.Y. – Of the two overnight stakes carded for Wednesday at Belmont Park, the $60,000 Mom’s Command looks a lot more appealing from a wagering standpoint, in part because zeroing in on the horse to beat is not easy.
The Mom’s Command, for 3-year-old fillies at one mile, will be run as the third race on the card, immediately following the Corma Ray for New York-bred sprinters. Both races are worth $60,000.
