Three stakes, each worth $50,000, will be held during the holiday weekend at the Alameda County Fair in Pleasanton, Calif.
Eight 3-year-olds will compete in Friday’s Livermore Valley Wines, a six-furlong sprint that has attracted the stakes winners Road Ready, Ain’t No Other, Mack’s Gold Bullet and Midnight Fiddle.
ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. – Chris Block was more than a little surprised to hear that he trains one of the fastest horses in the country, at least according to the initial Beyer Speed Figure assigned to Shrewd Operator for his win Saturday in the White Oak Handicap. Shrewd Operator’s nine-length win in the White Oak was clocked in 1:09.89 for six furlongs on a slow-playing Polytrack surface. That translated to a Beyer Figure of 114, the co-second highest figure recorded in 2011, and a pretty astounding number for a 7-year-old returning from a 10-month layoff.
ELMONT, N.Y. – Three optional claiming races and the first turf sprint of the season for 2-year-olds are on tap as a six-day holiday week gets under way Wednesday.
Bold Warrior, an up-and-coming 3-year-old who was scratched from the Grade 2 Woody Stephens on Belmont Stakes day, will break from the outside in a field of five and looms a prohibitive choice in race 3, a $52,000 sprint at seven furlongs with first-level allowance conditions.
ETOBICOKE, Ontario – Is the second time just as sweet?
Josie Carroll had her first Queen’s Plate winner in 2006 when Edenwold, a colt owned by Albertans Jim and Alice Sapara, turned the trick at 16-1.
This past Sunday, Carroll was back in the Queen’s Plate winner’s circle with another set of Albertans, Vern and Donna Dubinsky, and their filly Inglorious, who was sent off as the third favorite at 9-2.
Snow Top Mountain will be looking for her first stakes win Wednesday night in the $100,000 Girls Incorporated of Shelbyville Shelby County Stakes at Indiana Downs, and trainer Tom Proctor thinks the 4-year-old has a good chance to accomplish the goal.
“We wanted to get a stakes win for her and we thought this would be a good spot,” Proctor said. “But it did come up pretty tough and looks to be a nice race.”
INGLEWOOD, Calif. - Harmonious, the winner of two Grade 1 races for 3-year-old fillies last year, is expected to make her first start on turf in five months in Monday’s $150,000 Royal Heroine Mile for fillies and mares.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. – Zazu will be pointed for the $500,000 TVG Alabama Stakes at Saratoga on Aug. 20, said trainer John Sadler.
Zazu won the Grade 2 Hollywood Oaks at Hollywood Park on Saturday, catching Kentucky Oaks winner Plum Pretty in the final furlong of the race over 1 1/16 miles.
LOS ALAMITOS, Calif. - Separate Fire continued her domination of the 2-year-old division at Los Alamitos on Sunday with a near-perfect win in the $1,126,000 Ed Burke Million Futurity.
Ridden by Ramon Sanchez, Separate Fire ($6.60) broke well and led throughout the 350-yard race, winning by a neck over Kindly Fellow. Oceanik, the longest shot in the field at 41-1, finished third in the field of 10. Separate Fire was timed in 17.30 seconds.
ETOBICOKE, Ontario – The $500,000 Prince of Wales Stakes, the 1 3/16-mile dirt race at Fort Erie that is the second leg of Canada’s Triple Crown, may or may not be on the agenda for Queen’s Plate winner Inglorious. But the connections of Hippolytus, Pender Harbour, and Bowman’s Causeway, the second- through fourth-place finishers in the Queen’s Plate, already have indicated a willingness to proceed to the Fort Erie showpiece.
Hippolytus, one of three horses in the Queen’s Plate trained by Mark Casse, finished 2 1/2 lengths behind the winner at odds of 61-1.
