AUBURN, Wash. – The prospect of Noosa Beach running in the 2011 Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile inched closer to reality this week when owner Jeff Harwood said he was “99 percent sure” he would meet the June 30 deadline to pay a $25,000 Open Enrollment nomination fee that would make Noosa Beach eligible to compete at Churchill Downs on the first Saturday in November.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia – Orchid’s Silver should appreciate being back with her own sex when she runs in a $12,500 claiming race for fillies and mares that will serve as Friday’s feature at Hastings. The 1 1/16-mile race drew seven horses and will go as race 6 on the seven-race card that begins at 7:15 p.m. Pacific.
River Downs has canceled racing for Wednesday to repair the racetrack, which has sustained damage from recent storms.
Severe storms blew through the Cincinnati area Monday and Tuesday and washed out several sections of the track. The track was closed for training Tuesday and Wednesday. Racing is scheduled to resume on Thursday with a first post of 1 p.m. Eastern.
Turf Paradise announced a boost in purse money for its upcoming 2011/2012 meet, with overnight purses being increased 10 percent and stakes purses 26 percent.
The Phoenix track opens its 157-day meet Oct. 1 and runs through May 6, 2012, with live racing on a Friday-through-Tuesday schedule.
The purses for 32 stakes will be increased to $35,000 from $25,000, and a couple of the meet's marquee events, the Cotton Fitzsimmons Mile and Turf Paradise Derby, will see purse hikes to $75,000 from $50,000.
After a short but successful one-week run at Stockton for the San Joaquin Fair, racing returns to the San Francisco Bay Area on Thursday for the 13-day Alameda County Fair meeting at Pleasanton.
With free fair admission helping to fill the grandstand, Stockton handled more than $1 million per day, showing more than a 40 percent increase for the first two days of the meet, according to Larry Swartzlander, the California Authority of Racing Fairs director of racing.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – With just two weeks of racing remaining at the Churchill Downs meet entering Thursday’s card, jockeys Corey Lanerie and Julien Leparoux are deadlocked in competition for leading rider, with each having 37 wins, 9 more than third-place Shaun Bridgmohan.
So it is fitting that the duo could very well end up dueling aboard their mounts in featured eighth race Thursday at Churchill, a $62,100 first-level allowance in which Leparoux is on 3-1 morning-line favorite Champagne Run and Lanerie on 5-1 third-choice Manx Miss.
St. John’s River, the Kentucky Oaks runner-up who is based at Louisiana Downs, is scheduled to ship to Delaware Park on Thursday, according to trainer Andrew Leggio. She is being pointed to the Grade 2, $300,000 Delaware Oaks on July 9.
“One week before the race, we’re going to work her over there,” Leggio said of the early ship. “We want to let her get the feel of that track.”
The new $500,000 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Sprint to be run Nov. 4 has an early favorite in Canigotoo. He popped a Beyer Speed Figure of 96 last Thursday at Lone Star Park, when he won his career debut by 12 1/4 lengths. The number is the highest earned by a 2-year-old so far in 2011.
Bret Calhoun, who trains Canigotoo, said the horse’s owners, Jerry Durant and Bill Jordan, are expected to make Canigotoo eligible for the Breeders’ Cup. The deadline for a one-time open-enrollment program on offer this year is June 30. Durant and Jordan would need to pay a fee of $6,000.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – There will be no extending of trainer Ken McPeek’s streak of five consecutive graded stakes victories at the current Churchill Downs meet, which concludes July 4.
He doesn’t have a single horse nominated to the final three graded stakes races of the meet: Saturday’s Grade 3 Debutante for 2-year-old fillies, the Grade 3 Bashford Manor on July 2, and the closing-day, Grade 2 Firecracker on July 4.
So McPeek will instead try to keep his momentum going out of town this summer.
