Slinkys Fortune is the highest earner in the $30,000 Faubourg St. John at 870 yards Saturday at Fair Grounds. He is also a stakes winner over the New Orleans strip, having accounted for last year’s $25,000 Los Alamitos. Slinkys Fortune, who drew the rail, is an earner of $191,435.
Paul Jones, the nation’s leading trainer of Quarter Horses, will send out top contenders Separate Bet and Strike It Quick in the Grade 2, $55,000 James Isaac Hobbs at 350 yards at Zia Park on Saturday.
Separate Bet, who has placed in five graded stakes since February 2010, could be sitting on a peak race in what will be his third out since May. Strike It Quick is the defending champ in the Hobbs.
ELMONT, N.Y. – Trainer James Bond flew home from the Keeneland sales Wednesday night, not getting to his Saratoga home until around midnight. Bond said he got about three hours of sleep before he got ready to go to his Gridley Street barn well before sunrise to make sure Tizway was the first horse to hit the Oklahoma track when it opened at 5:30 a.m.
If Fovee runs back to her dazzling comeback win last month, Saturday night’s Grade 1, $150,000 Mildred Vessels Memorial Handicap for Quarter Horses at Los Alamitos could turn into a race for second. In all, a field of 10 fillies and mares will start in the 400-yard dash that provides its winner with a berth into the Grade 1, $750,000 Champion of Champions.
AUBURN, Wash. – Underdogs will be plentiful Sunday at Emerald Downs as horsemen give chase to $215,000 in purse money being offered in six Washington Cup stakes races. The races are restricted to horses foaled in Washington or sired by stallions standing in the state, and with a limited number of stakes-caliber runners to draw from, the fields are stacked with maidens, erstwhile claimers, and other outsiders.
OCEANPORT, N.J. – Dabnabit goes for a sweep of the statebred sprint stakes, while Who’s the Cowboy, a recent entrant into the millionaire’s club, will need every bit of his back class in the richest event on the day as Monmouth Park presents the ninth annual New Jersey Thoroughbred Festival on Saturday.
The festival salutes the state’s breeding program, with 12 races exclusively for New Jersey-breds. A trio of handicaps top the program: the $100,000 Charles Hesse III and a pair of $60,000 events, the New Jersey Breeders and the Jersey Girl Handicap.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia – Northern Causeway will get a well-deserved rest after his gutsy win in the Grade 3, $200,000 British Columbia Derby at Hastings last Sunday, according to owner Rozamund Barclay.
“We’re going to take him back to Golden Gate and see how he’s doing,” Barclay said. “It has been a busy month for him, and we just want to give him some time to make sure he’s OK.”
The purses for the 12-race Saturday card at Parx Racing are so outrageous that perhaps only the $250,000 being offered for the feature race, the President’s Cup, seems to be in line.
It’s Pennsylvania Owners’ Appreciation Day at the suburban Philadelphia racino, with purses purposely inflated so as to reward horse owners loyal to the local program. The first race on the card is a $5,000 claiming race with a $40,000 purse – and it only gets more obscene from there, with a $90,000 maiden race and a $94,000 allowance on tap later.
Being good enough to win a second-level turf allowance at Saratoga should translate into being good enough to win a $50,000 stakes at Kentucky Downs.
Shouldn’t it?
“You’d think so,” said Jimmy Baker, who Saturday will be hoping to see Bergerac make that very transition.
ETOBICOKE, Ontario – Woodbine will be offering a turf stakes triple header of the $1 million Woodbine Mile, $500,000 Northern Dancer and $300,000 Canadian on Sunday. And, perhaps not surprisingly considering their local histories, the only trainers with starters in all three races are Mark Frostad and Roger Attfield.
Frostad’s contestants will be Grand Adventure in the Grade 1 Woodbine Mile, Hotep in the Grade 1 Northern Dancer, and Stars to Shine, Forest Uproar, and Magic Broomstick in the Grade 2 Canadian.
