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HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – Winslow Homer can be a playful dude.
On a recent morning, he grabbed a reporter’s notepad with his big teeth and flagged it up and down for show, finally relinquishing it when presented with a sweet potato.
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HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – The $300,000 Gulfstream Park Handicap was scheduled to be the marquee event here Saturday until the Timely Writer Stakes and Uncle Mo came along to steal its thunder. But the Grade 2 Gulfstream Park Handicap still attracted a marquee-type field, led by Tizway, Rule, Soaring Empire, and Tackleberry, the Cinderella horse to this point of the 2011 meeting.
OLDSMAR, Fla. – Askbut I Won’ttell has won two of her last three races in Grade 3 company and finished a fast-closing second in her most recent start, the $300,000 Sunshine Millions Filly and Mare Turf. She will meet Queen Elizabeth II Challenge Cup runner-up Zagora in Saturday’s Grade 3, $150,000 Hillsborough Stakes at Tampa Bay Downs.
The Hillsborough, a 1 1/8-mile turf race for fillies and mares, tops the Tampa Bay Derby undercard.
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ARCADIA, Calif. – For a few moments on a Saturday afternoon last October, the impossible, or at least the highly unexpected, seemed on the verge of occurring: Zenyatta, 18 races into her unbeaten career, trailed Switch by three lengths with a furlong to go in the Grade 1 Lady’s Secret Stakes at Hollywood Park and the champion wasn’t making ground on the 3-year-old filly.
GRAND ISLAND, Neb. – A strong field of eight older horses take their first steps towards an ultimate goal of the $75,000 Bosselman/Gus Fonner Stakes in late April when they go six furlongs in the $25,000 Budweiser-Tondi Stakes on Saturday at Fonner Park.
Two-time defending champion The Nutz makes his seasonal debut here, as does Reach One More and Tiger Lake. Any of them could be the favorite, but they will also have to contend with the blazing speed of the 4-year-old Honkytonk Stomp.
Sweet Goodbye’s last three races haven’t been nearly as good as her first four starts in 2010, when she won three stakes, highlighted by the Grade 2 Barbara Fritchie Handicap, and placed second in the $250,000 Sugar Maple.
A class drop from graded stakes to Maryland-bred company may be suffiicient for the 6-year-old mare Sweet Goodbye to regain her old form in Saturday’s $75,000 Conniver Stakes at Laurel Park.
A majority interest in Silver Medallion, the El Camino Real Derby winner, was sold Thursday to Blackrock Racing Partners, a partnership headed by oil entrepreneur Steve Marshall, according to both Marshall and Michael Ryan, who previously owned 100 percent of the colt.
“I’ve sold a little over 50 percent,” Ryan, a bloodstock agent based in Kentucky, said from Ocala, Fla., where he is attending a 2-year-old sale. “The horse will remain with Steve Asmussen.”
Rogue Romance, the third-place finisher in last month’s Risen Star Stakes, has a heel bruise that will keep him out of the Grade 2, $1 million Louisiana Derby on March 26, his connections announced on Thursday.
According to trainer Ken McPeek, the injury should not impact Rogue Romance’s ability to make the Kentucky Derby on May 7. Options for his next race now include the Grade 1, $1 million Arkansas Derby and the Grade 1, $750,000 Blue Grass Stakes, both April 16.
PHOENIX – There isn’t much that bothers Table Mesa. She’s won on turf, on dirt, routing, sprinting, and on wet ground. She is a stakes winner routing and sprinting on dirt, and is stakes placed routing on turf. So when the 6-year-old mare gets in the gate for Saturday’s $25,000 Mesa Handicap at Turf Paradise, she’ll surely be comfortable in the 6 1/2-furlong main track event.
But one thing that could get in her way is the competition. Holding Her Ground comes in from California and is the 123-pound highweight in a field of eight fillies and mares.
