OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Inside or outside, from on the pace or off, wet track or dry, trainer Rudy Rodriguez looks to have it all covered in Wednesday’s featured second-level allowance race at Aqueduct.
Rodriguez, who has won 8 races from 17 starters over the inner track since March 2, sends out the uncoupled entry of Bwana Babe and Lady Durlyn in the mile-and-70-yard race, and both five-time winners are more than capable of winning.
Delightful Mary took a step toward more important engagements when rallying Monday to win the filly division of the $100,000 Ocala Breeders’ Sales Championship in Ocala, Fla. The race was one of four on the Day of Champions card, which has been held annually since 1990 for horses sold at OBS. All races are betless exhibitions for 3-year-olds, and all are run over a one-mile Safetrack synthetic surface.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Mike Repole watched the replay of the Timely Writer Stakes for about the 15th time while surrounded by family and nearly 50 friends in his suite located high atop the grandstand here early Saturday evening. And his Uncle Mo looked just as impressive winning the race the 15th time around as he did the first.
ETOBICOKE, Ontario – The Usual Q. T. earned a World Thoroughbred Committee rating of 120, which was the best figure of any horse who raced at Woodbine in 2010 and topped a comprehensive ranking of local performers compiled by Steve Lym, who is the racing secretary and a director of racing for the Woodbine Entertainment Group. Lym also is a member of the World Thoroughbred and North American ratings committees.
The Usual Q. T. finished second in last year’s Woodbine Mile, and went on to run third in the Breeders’ Cup Mile.
OLDSMAR, Fla. –When the blue-collar types take on the blue-bloods of racing, the blue-bloods usually come out on top.
But once in a while David topples Goliath and such was the case last Saturday in the Grade 2, $350,000 Tampa Bay Derby when locally based Watch Me Go and Crimson Knight raced previously undefeated Brethren into defeat down the lane, then battled to the wire together before the 43-1 Watch Me Go emerged with a neck win in one of the biggest upsets in the 31-year history of Tampa Bay Downs’s premier race for 3-year-olds.
A total of 25 stakes will make up the 2011 Evangeline Stakes schedule, which will be worth just less than $1.8 million.
The anchor of the stakes program at the Opelousas, La., track will once again be Louisiana Showcase Night, a 10-race program that features Louisiana-breds on July 2.
HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – Havre de Grace is all set for a rematch with champion Blind Luck this weekend after breezing five furlongs in a bullet 1:00.60 on Monday morning at Oaklawn Park. The fillies are scheduled to meet for the fifth time Saturday in the Grade 3, $150,000 Azeri. The race is Oaklawn’s prep for the Grade 1, $500,000 Apple Blossom Handicap.
ARCADIA, Calif. – John Shear, the popular paddock guard seriously injured on Saturday when hit by a loose horse while heroically protecting a small girl, was described as improved “180 degrees” on Sunday night by his son, Mike.
“I went and saw him last night in ICU and he didn’t look good,” Mike Shear said, adding that on Sunday, “he was sitting upright, talking, laughing, and completely coherent and he’s stable.”
