Jockeys Mike Smith and Chantal Sutherland, who were once engaged, will compete in a match race at Del Mar on Aug. 7, the track announced Thursday.
Nicknamed the “Battle of the Exes,” the match race will be the first at Del Mar since Patrick Valenzuela beat Julie Krone by a nose in a 2003 race. The Smith-Sutherland match race will be part of Ladies Day at Del Mar and will be run over a mile or 1 1/16 miles.
Fixin to Fly and Ima Chickie Too, second and eighth in the Kindergarten Futurity on May 22, are among the 76 horses entered for nine divisions of the Governor's Cup Futurity trials at Los Alamitos on Saturday evening.
The 10 fastest qualifiers, regardless of finishing positions, will advance to the $450,000 final on July 30, which is part of a lucrative night of stakes for California-bred Quarter Horses.
Fly Corona, the fastest qualifier from the July 2 trials, has drawn the rail for Saturday's $203,100 Retama Park Derby for 3-year-olds Saturday evening at the suburban San Antonio track.
The 400-yard Retama Park Derby could give the well-traveled Fly Corona his first stakes win in his 11th start. He finished second in the Dash For Cash Juvenile at Lone Star Park last October and a troubled ninth as the 9-5 favorite in the Remington Park Derby in Oklahoma on April 16.
ELMONT, N.Y. – The 56-day Belmont meet concludes Sunday, when the $60,000 Miss South Shore overnight stakes highlights a 10-race program.
Mineralogist, the champion New York-bred juvenile filly of 2009 who missed her entire 3-year-old season, is the 2-1 morning-line choice over four rival fillies and mares in the one-mile race. After winning sloppy renewals of the Joseph A. Gimma and the Maid of the Mist for John Kimmel in 2009, she underwent knee surgery and later suffered a puncture wound of the same knee that led to an infection and an extended course of antibiotics.
MIAMI – Trainer David Fawkes is on the road for Saratoga this weekend, where he’ll spend most of the summer overseeing the 28 horses he’ll have stabled at the Spa during the upcoming meet. But the first stop Fawkes made on the way up to New York was in Ocala on Friday morning to visit an old friend, Big Drama, the reigning Breeders’ Cup Sprint and Eclipse Award winner who has spent the last several months at the farm of his owner-breeder, Harold Queen.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Having won over 4,800 races, including three of the last five Kentucky Derbies, jockey Calvin Borel has the credentials to ride at the prestigious Saratoga meet that begins July 22.
He is just choosing not to be there − not on a daily basis, anyway. Rather, Borel is content to spend his summer at his home in Louisville with his wife, Lisa. He will ride most often at Ellis Park in Henderson, Ky., and pursue lucrative out-of-town stakes mounts when they arise.
ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. – News updates do not exactly come flying out of Ballydoyle, trainer Aidan O’Brien’s Irish home base, but it seems fairly certain at this point that Cape Blanco, a solid winner of the Man o’ War at Belmont on July 9, will return to the United States for a start in the Aug. 13 Arlington Million.
AUBURN, Wash. – Class Included and Rainier Ice are the horses to beat Sunday as Emerald Downs presents a stakes-race doubleheader for 3-year-olds. Class Included tops the Kent Handicap for fillies, while Rainier Ice headlines the Seattle Slew Handicap for colts and geldings. Both races are 1 1/16 miles and carry a $50,000 purse.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. – Now that unbeaten Majestic City has risen to top of the 2-year-old division in Southern California, his challenge is to stay there.
On Sunday at Hollywood Park, the unbeaten colt is favored to win the Grade 3 Hollywood Juvenile, a six-furlong race with predictable recent history – favorites have won 16 of the past 20 Juveniles. Yet the $100,000 race is not a walkover for Majestic City.
“It’s definitely a tougher field, but I think he’s up to it,” trainer Peter Miller said.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. − Santa Anita has removed more than 17,000 tons of material from its main track in an effort to reduce the clay content and add sand, a project that may not be finished for another week.
Track president George Haines said the top six inches of the track have been removed and will be diluted with a “clean sand, with very little clay content.” The project began after training last Monday and was expected to take 10 days. Haines said Thursday that the project may take longer than that and may be done by next weekend.
