LOUISVILLE, Ky. – The Jimmy Baker stable has cooled off after a red-hot start to the Churchill Downs spring meet, but that was inevitable. Nobody can sustain the 80-percent pace he set by winning with 4 of his first 5 starters, although Baker said he sure would have liked to.
“It was a nice little tear we went on,” said Baker.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. – Last fall, after Sarah’s Secret won her first two races in promising style, trainer Kathy Walsh decided she had seen enough. She gave the filly the winter off, planning for a resumption of racing this spring.
“She needed to grow and needed some time,” Walsh said. “She was getting a little wound up.”
ELMONT, N.Y. – With morning-line favorite Francesco Rules an expected scratch, Thursday’s $60,000 Kelly Kip overnight stakes at Belmont Park will match up four 2-year-olds coming off front-running maiden wins at out-of-town tracks.
Two of them – Threeanddonedan and Suntorious – invade for Maryland-based trainer John Salzman Jr. after winning in the slop at Pimlico and Penn National.
MIAMI – Manicero is arguably the most significant of the 30 horses entered in the four stakes races to be decided on Saturday’s Summit of Speed Preview program at Calder. He also may be the most surprising of those entries.
Since he returned last Friday from serving a three-day suspension for a riding infraction, there has been no stopping Russell Baze. Baze will try to continue his roll in the $50,000 Lost in the Fog on Saturday during the final weekend of the Golden Gate Fields meet.
ELMONT, N.Y. -- For Brilliant Speed, the Kentucky Derby was a make or break race. Run well, and he would get another chance on dirt. Run poorly, and perhaps it would time to permanently affix a label on him of being a turf or synthetic surface specialist.
“I was hopefully optimistic,” his trainer, Tom Albertrani, said Tuesday morning at Belmont Park.
ELMONT, N.Y. – Though trainer Tom Bush sounded as if he were tempted to give the 1 1/4 miles of Saturday’s Grade 1 Manhattan a try with Get Stormy, he confirmed Monday that he would skip the race with his multiple Grade 1 winner. Instead, Bush said he would likely run Get Stormy in Sunday’s Grade 3, $250,000 Monmouth Stakes at 1 1/8 miles at Monmouth Park.
“I can’t deal with that mile and a quarter,” Bush said. “There’s nothing more than a mile in that horse’s pedigree.”
ELMONT, N.Y. – Though Jeff Bonde had a reservation for the multiple Grade 1 winner Smiling Tiger on a Tuesday flight from California to New York, the trainer said Monday afternoon that he would not be shipping the horse here for Saturday’s Grade 2, $250,000 True North Handicap, for which he would have likely been the favorite.
“We changed our mind this morning,” Bonde said Monday by phone from California. “I went back and forth about it. I think he needs a little more space between races.”
ELMONT, N.Y. – Trainer Christophe Clement probably picked out Friday’s Grade 3, $100,000 Poker Stakes at Belmont Poker as a way to ease his French-bred gelding Right One into North American graded stakes competition. A good idea in theory, perhaps, but it doesn’t look like it turned out that way.
