AUBURN, Wash. – Mirror Pond and Chilecito headline the feature race Friday at Emerald Downs, a $10,000 claimer for fillies and mares at one mile. The eight-race card begins at 6 p.m. Pacific, kicking off a relatively quiet weekend at the suburban Seattle track. Emerald’s next stakes race, the Washington State Legislators, is set for June 12, a week from Sunday.
ELMONT, N.Y. – In a match-up likely to separate contenders from pretenders among 3-year-old New York-bred filly sprinters, Ava K., Miss Valentine, Sentimental Lass, and Yawkey Way clash in Friday’s $60,000 Wandering Cloud overnight stakes at Belmont Park.
Those four are stakes winners who carry 122 pounds under the allowance conditions of the 6 1/2-furlong race, giving four pounds to Fortheloveof Anna and Hot Danger.
Negotiations over a lease of Monmouth Park in New Jersey remained open on Wednesday, a state-imposed deadline, but the lack of an agreement is not expected to impact the track’s current race meet in any way, according to Morris Bailey, the New Jersey horseman and real estate developer who is seeking to lease the track from the state for the next five years.
BOSSIER CITY, La. – Morris Nicks is heating up just like the weather at Louisiana Downs.
As the mercury creeps up toward triple digits in northern Louisiana earlier than usual this summer, Nicks has had a run of victories that finds him atop the trainer standings with eight winners from just 24 starters during the first month of the meeting.
“It does make things go easier,” Nicks said during training hours Monday. “It is always nice to win races.”
Kommando Kate looms as a prohibitive choice when Assiniboia Downs kicks off its 2011 stakes schedule on Friday with the $25,000 Hazel Wright for Manitoba-bred 3-year-old fillies at six furlongs.
A total of 28 stakes worth an aggregate $970,000 will be offered at the meeting, with the highlight being the Manitoba Lotteries Derby, which recently had its purse reinstated to $75,000 after Assiniboia Downs restructured an agreement with the provincial government on its share of revenue from on-site video lottery terminals.
MIAMI – Like most Calder-based trainers, Henry Collazo struggled through the winter at Gulfstream Park. But once the current meet opened in late April, things suddenly began looking up for many of the local horsemen in general and Collazo in particular.
ETOBICOKE, Ontario – Rahy’s Attorney is not only still going strong at age 7 but appears to have reinvented himself as a long-distance turf runner this season.
On Friday, Rahy’s Attorney will be looking to strut his stuff over Woodbine’s turf course for the first time in 2011 as the probable favorite in a field of eight plus one also-eligible for the allowance prep for the Singspiel Stakes.
Animal Kingdom, Nehro, Mucho Macho Man, Shackleford, Master of Hounds, Santiva, and Brilliant Speed were the first seven across the wire in the Kentucky Derby on May 7, and if all come back, as now scheduled, on June 11 in the Belmont Stakes at Belmont Park, it will mark the first time ever that the first seven finishers in the Derby also competed in the Belmont Stakes.
The absence of Freaky has not dented Adan Farias’s older horse division.
Last Sunday, Farias watched four of his horses qualify for the $240,200 Vessels Maturity on June 19 in time trials – Mark It Famous, Chivalry SR, Snitcher, and Whole Lot of Karma. Freaky won the 2009 Vessels Maturity, the year he was named World Champion, but was transferred to a trainer in Oklahoma earlier this spring.
