Kentucky-based mare Kiss Mine, unbeaten in four trips to Mountaineer Racetrack for turf stakes, will try to keep her perfect record intact when she returns to West Virginia to defend her title in Monday’s Summer Finale Stakes.
The Summer Finale, which goes as race 2 on a nine-race holiday card that begins at 7 p.m. Eastern, is the second of two $75,000 stakes scheduled for a mile and 70 yards on turf. The program begins with the Labor Day.
Ochoa has been managed for an All American moment. His connections bypassed the rich Rainbow Futurity series for Quarter Horses this past summer at Ruidoso Downs to focus on securing a spot in the starting gate for the Grade 1, $2.4 million All American Futurity.
Ochoa executed the plan to perfection. He was the fastest qualifier among 246 horses seeking 10 berths into the All American, which will be the richest race ever run for Quarter Horses when it closes out the Ruidoso meet on Monday.
DEL MAR, Calif. – For much of the past month, trainer Dan Hendricks debated whether to send his promising 2-year-old Sheer Talent to Calder for a late August stakes or stay in California for Wednesday’s $250,000 Del Mar Futurity.
Logistics forced Hendricks to try the local race.
“I was serious until I couldn’t get shipping arrangements,” Hendricks said. “That changed everything. We stayed home.”
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Power World may not possess the gaudy speed figures that some of his rivals do, but he does have more experience, something that could give him an edge in a highly contentious renewal of Monday’s Grade 1, $250,000 Hopeful Stakes at Saratoga.
A field of 10 2-year-old maiden winners will contest the seven furlongs of the Hopeful, the highlight of an 11-race closing-day program that also includes the Grade 3 Glens Falls for fillies and mares at 1 3/8 miles on turf.
Chamberlain Bridge and Heros Reward, a pai r of millionaires with 30 career victories between them, will attempt to turn back the clock to their glory days while fighting off challenges from two of this season’s up-and-coming turf sprinters, Ben’s Cat and Regally Ready, in Monday’s Turf Monster Handicap at Parx Racing.
The Grade 3, $350,000 Turf Monster is part of a three-stakes package worth $850,000 on the holiday card with the $300,000 Smarty Jones for 3-year-olds on the main track and the $200,000 Turf Amazon Handicap for fillies and mares.
Trainer Bill Anderson was pleasantly surprised at how well J J’s Lucky Train bounced back following the Grade 1 Haskell Invitational.
“He ran his eyeballs out,” Anderson said. “He cleaned up the feed tub that night, and he’s doing as good now as he ever has. I thought it might take something out of him, but it sure didn’t.”
J J’s Lucky Train returns to action Monday in the $300,000 Smarty Jones for 3-year-olds at Parx Racing. The race is the local prep for the Grade 2, $1 million Pennsylvania Derby on Sept. 24.
In the coming weeks and months, Saratoga races will be showing up on the past performances of horses returning to run in Kentucky. An early chance for horseplayers to see how those horses might run will arise Monday at Ellis Park, where the 31-day meet comes to a close with the fourth running of the $50,000 Cliff Guilliams Memorial, a 1 1/16-mile turf race.
ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. – A h orseplayer who had come into the 2011 Arlington Park meeting determined to play every turf horse sent out by trainer Michele Boyce this summer would, at this juncture, be a horseplayer with a sack full of cash. Grass horses from the Boyce stable have won nine of 30 starts while producing a swollen $4.12 return on every $2 bet to win.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia – Crew Leader is coming back pretty quickly Monday after running a hard race in the Grade 3, $200,000 Longacres Mile at Emerald Downs Aug. 21. If he can handle the quick turnaround off that fourth-place finish he will be tough to beat in the $50,000 Sir Winston Churchill at Hastings.
AUBURN, Wash. – A pair of $21,000 allowance races, one for 2-year-olds at six furlongs, the other for 3-year-old fillies at 6 1/2, will serve as the featured events on a 10-race Labor Day program at Emerald Downs.
The 2-year-old race is restricted to horses who passed through the sales ring at a Washington Thoroughbred Breeders and Owners Association auction. The WTBOA, which will hold its annual select yearling and mixed sale Tuesday at Emerald Downs, kicked in $5,000 to help fund the purse, and the race will showcase a handful of graduates from its 2010 sale.
