AUBURN, Wash. – Noosa Beach has been brilliant for a long time now, finishing first in seven of eight starts since the 2010 Emerald Downs meeting began last April. A convincing winner in his 2011 debut a month ago, he’ll carry a four-race win streak into Sunday’s $50,000 Governor’s Handicap, the first in a series of stakes tests for older horses leading to the Grade 3 Longacres Mile.
DRF's national handicapper Mike Watchmaker is at Pimlico for today's Black-Eyed Susan card and Saturday's Preakness. Watch for video updates on DRF.com in the Preakness section and find more from Watchmaker on his handicapping blog.
Monmouth Park has received permission from state regulators to run 71 live racing days this year, officials said on Friday, as horsemen and the track’s leaseholder continue to negotiate over a long-term live-racing agreement.
Under the schedule, Monmouth will run Friday through Sunday and on holidays until after Labor Day, when the track will go to a Saturday and Sunday schedule. The track will close on Nov. 6 after three consecutive days of racing coinciding with Breeders’ Cup weekend.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. – Before he starts Jax El in the $70,000 Fran’s Valentine Stakes on Sunday at Hollywood Park, trainer Barry Abrams will give jockey Alonso Quinonez the same instructions he gave two weeks earlier.
“Don’t try to rate her,” Abrams said. “I don’t care how fast she goes. If she goes 1:07 and finishes last, it will be my fault.”
VANCOUVER, British Columbia – St. Liams Halo will try to win his first stakes race when he runs in the $50,000 John Longden 6000 at Hastings on Monday.
With the Grade 3 British Columbia Derby in mind, St. Liams Halo was purchased privately last year by Glen Todd and Patrick Kinsella. He never made it to the race, however, and his win over Heavenly Chorus in a $35,000 optional claimer at Hastings on April 24 was his first start since he won a one-mile maiden special weight on the Arlington Park turf course last June.
One of the main events was affectionately called the “Running of the Urinals,” where inebriated patrons dashed across the top of Porta Potties while other drunken fans pelted them with beer cans. Through 2008, this behavior and other raunchy acts were typical for the infield at Pimlico on the day of the Preakness Stakes, the middle jewel of horse racing’s Triple Crown.
ETOBICOKE, Ontario – Dancingall Theway ran the race of his life to capture the 2010 New Providence Stakes, and he will try to win that six-furlong event again Sunday at Woodbine.
Dancingall Theway came wide from third to beat a good field of Ontario-sired sprinters in last year’s New Providence, earning a big but seemingly inflated Beyer Speed Figure of 102. He missed the board in each of his next three outings before getting the winter off.
Recent history is working against Kindly Fellow in the $339,600 Kindergarten Futurity for Quarter Horses at Los Alamitos on Sunday.
Four of the last five winners of the Kindergarten entered the race unbeaten, with wins in a maiden race and a time trial for the Kindergarten, annually the season’s first futurity at Los Alamitos.
Rush Now, who has settled for minor shares of two stakes purses since he was given a confidence boost by dropping into a claiming race for the first time in his career, tries to get over the hump and back into the winner’s circle in Sunday’s $75,000 Spend a Buck Stakes for 3-year-olds at Monmouth Park.
