Ruthenia, unbeaten in two starts at 2 but a disappointment when she stepped up to face graded stakes competition in her 3-year-old debut last month, will try to regain her form in the $50,000, 7 1/2-furlong Pike Creek, the first turf stakes of the season at Delaware Park.
The Elkwood is supposed to be the first turf stakes of the season at Monmouth Park. Mother Nature, however, may have other plans.
Based on the amount of heavy rain that has fallen for most of the week and a forecast that calls for thunderstorms again Saturday, the $75,000 Elkwood could very well be shifted to one mile on the main track.
If that’s the case, trainers Derek Ryan, Mike Petro, and Skip Einhorn will look smart for having the foresight to enter horses with good dirt form, especially on wet tracks.
Nobody exemplifies the eagerness to get back to racing in New England more than jockey Tammi Piermarini. The reigning riding champ, she gets that chance Saturday, when Suffolk Downs opens the 2011 season.
While track officials and horsemen endured an acrimonious winter over purse levels and reeled from yet another legislative setback last year, Piermarini took her act cross-country, riding once at Santa Anita and working her way back east via Arizona and Iowa.
MIAMI – Everybody remembers Dancer’s Image being disqualified from his victory in the 1968 Kentucky Derby after testing positive for trace levels of phenylbutazone. Few remember, however, that he also was disqualified from third and placed eighth for causing interference two weeks later in the Preakness.
Few, that is, except owner-breeder Peter Fuller, who returns 43 years later on Preakness Day with another of his stakes-winning homebreds, Trip for A. J., who will vie for favoritism with recent nemesis Romacaca in Saturday’s $55,000 Sara’s Success at Calder.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia – Once again Classic Alley Kat will be the one to run down when she goes for her second straight stakes win in the $50,000 Senate Appointee for fillies and mares going 6 1/2 furlongs at Hastings Saturday.
Trained by Elizabeth Stolzenberg, Classic Alley Kat has improved dramatically since she won a $5,000 maiden claiming race at Portland Meadows in 2009. Since then Classic Alley Kat has won eight races and she was never threatened when she won the Brighouse Belles by 5 3/4 lengths with Keveh Nicholls aboard April 23.
Sometimes it’s difficult to figure out how a race will shape up. But in the case of the $100,000 James W. Murphy Stakes, there seems little doubt about which horse is headed to the early lead: Joes Blazing Aaron.
“His way is just to get into the race,” trainer Mike Maker said. “We’re going to let him go and do that. He might be better if he puts a little space between himself and the field.”
Chick Lang wasn’t much of a gambler, but he did appreciate a well-matched horse race. It’s fitting, then, that there is no clear-cut favorite among the nine 3-year-olds entered to run Saturday in the $100,000 Chick Lang Stakes (race 6), named for the late Pimlico general manager who died in March 2010.
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After futilely trying to beat the likes of Smiling Tiger and Amazombie in recent races at Santa Anita, Ventana gets a far easier spot. Trainer Bob Baffert has shipped him in to Pimlico, where he will accept his top weight package of 119 pounds in the Grade 3, $100,000 Maryland Sprint Handicap on Saturday.
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BALTIMORE – The 2010 Preakness card produced two of the top contenders for the $5 million Breeders’ Cup Classic nearly six months later: Lookin At Lucky, who won the Preakness, and Blame, who won the William Donald Schaefer Handicap. As most everyone knows, Blame captured the BC Classic at Churchill Downs in an epic triumph over Zenyatta, with Lookin At Lucky finishing fourth.
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BALTIMORE – A little later than his connections had hoped, Paddy O’Prado, an Eclipse finalist as North America’s leading 3-year-old of 2010, makes his 4-year-old debut in a rather soft renewal of the Grade 2, $200,000 Dixie Stakes on Saturday at Pimlico.