ALTOONA, Iowa – Local trainer Kelly Von Hemel holds a strong hand in both of Saturday evening’s co-featured $60,000 sprint stakes for Iowa-bred 3-year-olds.
Someplace Else looks like a standout in the six-furlong Bob Bryant. She has won two straight, including a front-running, 2 3/4-length maiden win April 9 at Oaklawn Park and a three-length allowance win at Prairie Meadows on May 6.
AUBURN, Wash. -- My Untamed Heart, one of the fastest horses at Emerald Downs through the first 12 days of the meeting, headlines Saturday’s feature race, a first-level optional $15,000 claimer for fillies and mares at six furlongs. Preakness Day festivities begin with the first live race at 2 p.m. Pacific. Animal Kingdom’s bid for the second leg of the Triple Crown is scheduled for a 3:16 post time, between the third and fourth races on Emerald’s nine-race card, and the feature is race 8.
Fugitive Angel returns to the Pennsylvania-bred ranks when she faces six other older fillies and mares in the $75,000 Ambassador of Luck, one of two six-furlong stakes on the Tapeta surface at Presque Isle Downs on Saturday afternoon.
ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. – In the 2010 Hanshin Cup, Country Flavor scored a 21-1 upset over two Mike Stidham-trained horses, Tybalt and Gran Estreno. Country Flavor is back for another try in the Grade 3, $100,000 Hanshin, but his Stidham-trained rival this time, Workin for Hops, may prove more formidable than last year’s foes.
Saturday’s feature at Northlands Park shapes up as a battle between Indoctrination and Dollarwaitnonadime. The six-furlong, first-level allowance race for 3-year-olds attracted six horses and Indoctrination figures to be a slight favorite over Dollarwaitnonadime.
Indoctrination is trained by Jim Meyaard. In the last two years at Northlands, Meyaard has won with 108 of his 279 starters (38 percent).
BALTIMORE, Md. – When Martin Garcia took over as the rider for Lookin At Lucky in last year’s Preakness Stakes, his lack of big-race experience was seen as an issue. Would he wilt under the pressure?
He didn’t, maybe because, for Garcia, pressure is not defined under the terms used for most anyone else.
Is it pressure to ride in the Preakness in front of 95,760 people, or is it pressure to be orphaned by your parents at birth and raised by aunts and uncles in a poor area of Mexico?
Whenever trainer D. Wayne Lukas wins a race, he picks a young fan out of the crowd near the winner’s circle and invites the child to join Lukas for the picture-taking ceremony. He made a lot of youngsters – not to mention their parents, and Coady Photography – quite happy this past winter at Oaklawn, where Lukas was the leading trainer, and he said he would continue the tradition at Pimlico should he win a race on Saturday.
PREAKNESS STAKES 2011: Contenders, odds, video, and news updates
ELMONT, N.Y. – You’d think Todd Pletcher would’ve already won the Shuvee Handicap a handful of times, but the five-time Eclipse Award winner will be looking for his first such victory in Saturday’s 36th running of the Grade 2, $150,000 race for fillies and mares.
Awesome Maria, coming off the two fastest performances of her career at Gulfstream Park, will be odds-on to rectify that situation when she breaks from post 3 with Javier Castellano and spots seven to 10 pounds to four rivals, including her uncoupled stablemate Happy Week, who drew the rail with Jose Lezcano.
Uncle Mo, the 2010 2-year-old champion who was scratched from the Kentucky Derby the day before the race due to a yet-to-be diagnosed internal issue, has put on 30 pounds since being moved from Churchill Downs to WinStar Farm on May 9, but there is still no timetable for his return to training or racing.
Trainer Todd Pletcher said Uncle Mo gets turned out four to five hours a day.
PREAKNESS STAKES 2011: Contender profiles, news updates, video, and odds >>
BALTIMORE – The Wednesday arrivals of nine Preakness horses led to considerably more activity around the Pimlico stakes barn Thursday morning, as those horses all had their first looks at the track when sent through routine jogs, gallops, and gate schoolings.
PREAKNESS STAKES 2011: Contenders, odds, video, and news updates
