ARCADIA, Calif. – It has taken a few months for trainer Simon Callaghan’s stable to gather momentum this year, and the results of the last three weeks suggest the stable deserves to be followed this spring.
Callaghan had five starters in January and February but has had eight in the last three weeks, including three winners and two second-place finishers.
LEXINGTON, Ky. – The colt who won the $1 million Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf last fall sure didn’t look like the one finishing fourth in a $27,000 turf allowance at Tampa Bay Downs last month. So when the opening-day feature, the Grade 3 Transylvania Stakes, is run Friday over the Keeneland turf course, horseplayers will have to decide which Pluck will emerge from the starting gate.
Barry Irwin, whose Team Valor International group owns Pluck, said he is as interested as anyone to see which one shows up Friday.
ARCADIA, Calif. - Champ Pegasus, who finished 12th in the $5 million Sheema Classic at Meydan Racecourse in Dubai on March 26, will be given a six- to eight-week break because of an ankle injury, trainer Richard Mandella said on Wednesday.
Champ Pegasus underwent an extensive nuclear scan test when he returned to the United States, which showed the injury. “He has an ankle that’s jarred up, but it’s nothing serious,” Mandella said. “We’ll give him a couple of months off.”
LEXINGTON, Ky. – John T. Ward Jr. grew up just outside the back stable gate at Keeneland and became a local legend by training horses to win a number of major races, most notably the 2001 Kentucky Derby with Monarchos.
And yet his photograph is missing from the walls of the Keeneland track kitchen.
“Haven’t won a Grade 1 here, and that’s what they say you need to do to get your picture up there,” said an amused Ward.
Myung Kwon Cho had been in the United States for 10 years when his curiosity finally got the best of him and he announced to his wife, Lydia, “Let’s go to the races.”
Horse races, that is, Santa Anita style, and a beautiful day it turned out to be, that sparkling Saturday morning in April 1988. Only problem was, the Chos arrived a bit late, and wherever they tried to penetrate the main racetrack parking lot they were turned away for lack of space. Oh well, Cho thought, there’s always another day.
ETOBICOKE, Ontario – Gary D is the lone winter-raced runner in Friday’s Woodbine headliner, which should give him an edge in the second-level optional claimer, scheduled for 5 1/2 furlongs.
Gary D started once here last year when he was trained by Steve Asmussen, finishing fourth in the Woodstock Stakes. After running second in the Jan. 8 Pelican Stakes at Tampa, he changed trainers for the fifth time in his career, going from Freddie Hyatt to Mark Casse.
Thanks to the miracle of modern science, the big horse in trainer Todd Beattie’s barn is ready to resume racing for the first time since the fall of 2009.
The millionaire Fabulous Strike, a five-time graded stakes winner and one of the nation’s top sprinters between 2007 and 2009, will launch his comeback Saturday night in a six-furlong $38,000 allowance at Penn National Race Course.
ETOBICOKE, Ontario - Fatal Bullet wintered at Palm Meadows and accompanied Reade Baker-trained stablemate Biofuel on her journey north.
A 6-year-old gelding who races for the Bear Stable of Danny Dion, whose nickname is Bear, Fatal Bullet was Canada’s champion sprinter and Horse of the Year in 2009 but failed to find the range last year while running second once and third five times in six starts. In his last outing, which came here on Nov. 20, Fatal Bullet was beaten 1 1/4 lengths when third in the Grade 3, six-furlong Kennedy Road.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Mike Smith says that the Kentucky Derby can weigh on a rider’s mind each spring.
“I don’t know when you want it the most – after you’ve won it once or if you’ve never won it,” he said on a recent morning at Santa Anita. “When you’ve won it, you want to win it again. You can imagine all you want, but until you do it . . . It feels like it’s a life changer.”
ETOBICOKE, Ontario – Biofuel was honored here on April 1 as Canada’s Horse of the Year and outstanding 3-year-old filly for 2010. But the chances of Biofuel repeating as a Sovereign Award winner are slim, as the stakes program here for older fillies and mares at Woodbine is very light in two-turn races on the main track.
