DEL MAR, Calif. – Spending $1.75 million for a 2-year-old just might be the Ultimate Gamble for Jed and Tim Cohen, who decided to throw in for that amount for a Medaglia d’Oro colt who debuts Saturday in race 7 at Del Mar for trainer Mark Glatt.
Ultimate Gamble is out of the Ghostzapper mare Eltimaas, making him a half-brother to Drefong, who won the 2016 Breeders’ Cup Sprint and, subsequently, that year’s Eclipse Award as champion male sprinter.
DEL MAR, Calif. -- Jockey Tyler Baze will have to meet with Del Mar’s stewards before being permitted to ride after failing to show up for his scheduled mounts Thursday.
Baze did not call the stewards prior to being removed from his mounts. Stewards finally heard from Baze via telephone after race 7 on the eight-race card. A meeting is scheduled for 2 p.m. Friday for Baze to explain his absence.
Baze was “a no-show,” steward Kim Sawyer said after Thursday’s day’s first race, in which Baze was replaced on his scheduled mount by Tiago Pereira.
With five wins from his first 18 runners, trainer Andy Mathis has had a sharp start to the Del Mar summer meeting.
“Should I stop and leave right now?” Mathis said on Thursday.
Mathis, 43, spends most of the year in Northern California, but he is staying at Del Mar through the end of the meeting on Sept. 11.
“This is a business when you can go cold or hot and go back and forth,” he said. “When I was looking before the meeting, I didn’t really see a big bang like that coming. It’s a good place to get hot.”
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – The owner, Hall of Fame football coach Bill Parcells, was sick. The trainer, Jeremiah Englehart, was at Citi Field with friends and family watching the Mets. Their horse Maple Leaf Mel made them miss not being at Saratoga.
Maple Leaf Mel made quite the debut Wednesday at Saratoga, cruising to a front-running five-length victory under Joel Rosario. The 2-year-old New York-bred daughter of Cross Traffic ran six furlongs in 1:11.48 and earned an 81 Beyer Speed Figure.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - Damon’s Mound had not yet made it back to the winner’s circle following his blowout debut win on July 2 at Churchill Downs, when trainer Michelle Lovell’s phone started to blow up.
The thrill of victory soon dissipated.
“As soon as I turned around, I got a text message from a big agent,” Lovell recalled Thursday morning. “I said ‘I’m not going to be able to enjoy this race because I’m not going train him for his next win.’ It was a roller-coaster ride for about five minutes. Then the text messages kept coming.”
The Coolmore connections of M.V. Magnier, Michael Tabor and Derrick Smith have purchased an interest in the unbeaten Gulfport, who goes for his third straight victory in Saturday’s Grade 2, $200,000 Saratoga Special.
Gulfport’s owners include Corinne and William Heiligbrodt, Jackport Farm and Whispering Oaks. Gulfport, trained by Steve Asmussen, was a $275,000 purchase at the Fasig-Tipton summer yearling sale in July 2021.
At the conclusion of his racing career, Gulfport will join his sire, Uncle Mo, as a stallion at Coolmore America.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - Chad Brown, still in search of his first victory in the race, will send out the top filly Regal Glory against four males in the Grade 1 Fourstardave Handicap, a one-mile turf feature on Saturday’s card at Saratoga.
Brown has run 13 horses in seven runnings of the Fourstardave, with four second-place finishes. In 2020, when he ran half the eight-horse field, his horses finished fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – His résumé includes four Eclipse Awards, more than 5,500 wins, $371 million in purse earnings – ranking him second all-time – and a Hall of Fame plaque.
Still, Javier Castellano has spent the better part of the last two years trying to reinvent himself.
Trainer Mike Puhich is looking forward to Sunday, when he is hoping to win the $150,000 Longacres Mile for the second year in a row with Background. The Puhich-trained Princess of Cairo is nominated to the Mile, but will start in the $75,000 Emerald Distaff, where she also is trying to repeat and figures to be a solid favorite in the 1 1/16-mile race for fillies and mares. Puhich also is entering Big Java in the $75,000 Washington Oaks. The only stakes race Puhich will not be participating in is the $75,000 Muckleshoot Derby.
Delaware Park in Newark, Del., has put in place restrictions on horses moving in and out of the backstretch after a horse there began exhibiting symptoms of equine herpesvirus, a highly contagious disease.
A biological sample from the horse has been sent to the nearby New Bolton Center for testing, according to racing secretary Jerome Doro, but presence of the disease has not yet been confirmed. The barn where the horse is stabled has been put on “lockdown,” Doro said, and horses that have come on to the grounds will, for the meantime, be barred from leaving.
