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HOT SPRINGS, Ark.– Blind Luck and Havre de Grace put on some memorable stretch battles during the second half of 2010. This year, there could be at least four more showdowns between the fillies. The first comes on Saturday, in the Grade 3, $150,000 Azeri at Oaklawn.
La Nez’s three stakes wins have been in $100,000 races for statebred females. She’s in another such event with a winning chance in Saturday’s Irish O’Brien Stakes on the hillside turf coursef at Santa Anita.
Trained by Eric Kruljac, La Nez won the California Cup Distaff over six furlongs at Hollywood Park last October, but lost her first two starts at this meeting – a sixth in the Grade 3 Monrovia Stakes on the hillside on Jan. 2 and a third in the Valentine Dancer Handicap for statebred females over a mile on turf on Feb. 26.
The leading horses in trainer Carla Gaines’s stable have switched from males to females in recent months.
Dancing in Silks, the winner of the 2009 Breeders’ Cup Sprint, was transferred to trainer Kathy Walsh earlier this year after a winless season in 2010. Temple City, the winner of the Cougar II Handicap last summer at Del Mar and the runner-up in the Grade 1 Hollywood Turf Cup last November, was retired to stud in December.
In their places, Malibu Pier and Mildly Offensive have emerged.
On paper, the $60,000 Bienville Stakes, the Saturday feature at Fair Grounds, looks like a whale of a race, but there’s a fair measure of uncertainty concerning who among the 11 entrants actually will make the starting gate.
What is certain is this: Midst, the 7-2 morning-line favorite for jockey John Velazquez and trainer Todd Pletcher, will not be racing. Midst, who hasn’t raced since May, has been posting steady turf drills at the Palm Meadows training center, but Pletcher said via text message Thursday that Midst would not be making the trip to New Orleans for the Bienville.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Jockey Chantal Sutherland, who won the Santa Anita Handicap earlier this month on Game On Dude, will ride in California on a full-time basis this year, bypassing her plan from previous seasons of leaving in the spring to ride at Woodbine, near Toronto.
Sutherland, 35, said on Thursday that the win in the Big Cap was a contributing factor in her decision, which she reached after consulting with her agent, Brian Beach. In past seasons, Sutherland has ridden in Southern California from mid-December to late March before returning to her native Canada.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Dips might be fun when riding a roller coaster, but when it comes to getting on a swaybacked racehorse, sometimes it’s not much of a joy ride.
“I’ve ridden a couple that were so bad it felt like you were sitting down in a bucket,” jockey Garrett Gomez said. “They’re not a lot of fun to ride. You feel like you’re going uphill.”
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ARCADIA, Calif. – At least until Saturday, Eclair de Lune can live off her reputation as the winner of the Grade 1 Beverly D. Stakes at Arlington Park last fall.
She lost two subsequent starts – finishing sixth in the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Turf in November and fourth in the Megahertz Stakes at Santa Anita in January, defeats that make a win in Saturday’s $150,000 Santa Ana Stakes all the more important.
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OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Trainer Tony Dutrow isn’t going to let one bad performance by Quantum Miss dispel his notion that the 3-year-old filly is of graded stakes caliber. By sunset Saturday, Dutrow will know if he has to amend his theory.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – The New York Racing Association on Thursday found a pot of gold from Genting New York, which announced it will sponsor this year’s Wood Memorial and raise the purse to $1 million from $750,000. The Wood, scheduled to feature the undefeated 2-year-old champion Uncle Mo, will be run on April 9 over Aqueduct’s main track.
“Mo was going there whether it was $500,000, $750,000 or a million,” said Mike Repole, owner of Uncle Mo.
