ARCADIA, Calif.-The development of Juniper Pass this spring left Ray Bell an anxious trainer before Sunday’s $150,000 San Juan Capistrano Handicap at Santa Anita.
“I’ve had horses in the Belmont Stakes, and the Kentucky Derby and I’ve never been so nervous than for this race,” he said. “He has been doing so well.”
Juniper Pass needed all of the San Juan Capistrano Handicap distance of about 1 3/4 miles on turf to prove Bell correct.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla.- Tar Heel Mom rebounded from one of the worst performances of her career to dominate Sunday’s $75,000 Harmony Lodge Handicap at Gulfstream Park.
Despite toting high weight of 123 pounds, Tar Heel Mom shook off early pace pressure from Bella Moneta before splashing to a 3 1/2-length victory over Hour Glass. The last time the pair met in the Grade 2 Vagrancy Handicap at Belmont Park on May 29T, Hour Glass defeated Tar Heel Mom by a half-length.
ETOBICOKE, Ontario — Essence Hit Man lowered the six-furlong Polytrack record at Woodbine during an impressive score Sunday in the $168,000 Jacques Cartier Stakes.
LEXINGTON, Ky. – Turbulent Descent drew off in the final furlong to run her career record to 5 for 6 with an easy score as an odds-on favorite Sunday in the Grade 2, $150,000 Beaumont Stakes at Keeneland.
ARCADIA, Calif.- John Shear, the 90-year-old Santa Anita paddock guard who was seriously injured when defending a small child from a loose horse on March 12, was released from the hospital on Saturday.
Shear’s adult son, Mike, said his father is planning a return to work for the Santa Anita fall meeting in the final week of September.
Shear arrived at his home in Sierra Madre, Calif., on Saturday afternoon, a day that coincided with his wife Diane’s birthday.
LEXINGTON, Ky. – The inch or two that separated the victorious Brilliant Speed from runner-up Twinspired in the 87th Blue Grass Stakes on Saturday at Keeneland might be the difference in which horse makes the field for the May 7 Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs.
Brilliant Speed, the 19-1 winner for Live Oak Plantation, most likely will run back in the Derby after earning the $450,000 winner’s share from the $750,000 purse, whereas the $150,000 second-place check for Twinspired currently leaves him short of what would be required to make the 20-horse cutoff in the Derby field.
HOT SPRINGS, Ark.- Hall of Fame trainer D. Wayne Lukas locked up the Oaklawn Park title on Saturday to earn his first training championship since taking the fall title at Turfway Park in 2005.
Lukas won 27 races from 126 starts during the Oaklawn season that closed Saturday, finishing three wins clear of second-leading trainer Allen Milligan. Lukas’s runners earned $846,610, which ranked second in meet earnings behind the $1.1 million banked by horses from the stable of trainer Larry Jones.
Defending Lone Star Park training champion Bret Calhoun began the Lone Star Park meet very much in un-Calhoun fashion, going 0 for 5 over the meet’s first two days, Thursday and Friday.
By Saturday, however, he was back in more familiar territory, winning two races at Lone Star, including the featured $50,000 JEH Stallion Station Stakes for Texas-breds with Tin Top Cat.
The next-race plans for Havre de Grace, who won her first Grade 1 in the $500,000 Apple Blossom Handicap on Friday, have not been set but a summer goal is the Grade 2, $750,000 Delaware Handicap on July 16, said her trainer, Larry Jones. Havre de Grace will ship Thursday to either Churchill Downs or Delaware Park, with Delaware to be her summer base, said Jones.
“She runs very well there,” he said. “We definitely have the Delaware Handicap in mind. Whether she runs in the Obeah as a prep, or something else, we’re still looking over things.”
HOT SPRINGS, Ark.- Archarcharch emerged from his Arkansas Derby win in excellent shape, his trainer, Jinks Fires, said the morning after the race, and on Monday night plans are to ship Archarcharch to Churchill Downs to begin preparations for the Kentucky Derby.
“If they don’t block the road we’ll be there,” said Fires, a trainer for 50 years who at the age 70 will have his first starter in the Kentucky Derby.
“I always wanted to go there with a horse I thought had a shot. And we do think we have a shot.”
