Remington Park will open for a 50-date Quarter Horse meet on Friday night. The season will run through Memorial Day.
Purses are projected at $250,000 a card, with the track’s 44-race stakes schedule led by the Grade 1, $1 million Heritage Place Quarter Horse Futurity on May 28. Other top events include the Grade 1, $250,000 Remington Park Championship that offers the winner a berth into the $750,000 Champion of Champions at Los Alamitos.
Fusa Code, who won his maiden in the $100,000 Borderland Derby last weekend at Sunland Park, is being considered for a start in the Grade 3, $800,000 Sunland Derby, said his trainer, Steve Asmussen. The 1 1/8-mile race is March 27.
Fusa Code came into the Borderland off a third-place finish in a maiden special weight route at Santa Anita on Feb. 3. The horse has since returned to Southern California and Asmussen said if he is doing as well as he was up to the Borderland that the Sunland Derby will become an option for Fusa Code.
HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – Smoke It Right has not made a wrong move in three career starts and with the right kind of performance Saturday in the $60,000 Mountain Valley at Oaklawn he could be headed to the Arkansas Derby, said his co-owner and trainer, Benard Chatters.
“We’re going to try to get to the big races,” Chatters said. “He’s a pretty nice kind of colt.”
KENTUCKY DERBY NEWS: Track all the 3-year-olds on the Triple Crown trail
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Stay Thirsty will try to step out of the shadow of his more heralded stablemate Uncle Mo and step onto the Triple Crown trail when he heads a field of nine entered to run in Saturday’s Grade 3, $250,000 Gotham Stakes at Aqueduct.
KENTUCKY DERBY NEWS: Track all the 3-year-olds on the Triple Crown trail
ARCADIA, Calif. – Jockey Martin Pedroza won the Santa Anita Handicap in his first try on the longshot Martial Law in 1989 and has spent the last two decades trying to duplicate the feat.
In six rides since in the Big Cap since 1990, Pedroza’s mounts have been unplaced, a streak he hopes ends on Saturday when he rides the longshot Quindici Man for the first time for trainer Craig Lewis.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – It’s not often a horse runs a 100 Beyer Speed Figure in a second level optional claiming race. And gets beat! But that’s exactly what happened to Safe Trip, who ran the race of his life in his 2011 debut but still came out on the short end of a head decision to the old pro Joey P. here at Gulfstream Park on Jan. 14.
Safe Trip will try again against similar company in Friday’s fifth race, a second-level optional $62,500 claimer at Gulfstream. The race drew a field of eight to go 6 1/2 furlongs on the main track.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – While Mucho Macho Man will skip the 1 1/8-mile Florida Derby, trainer Rick Dutrow said there is a chance that Flashpoint could make his two-turn debut in the Grade 1 fixture. Flashpoint remained undefeated with a spectacular 7 1/4-length victory over Travelin Man in Saturday’s Grade 2 Hutcheson, a performance for which he earned a 102 Beyer Speed Figure.
Dutrow said Wednesday that nothing definite has been picked out for Flashpoint’s next start but that many options are being considered, including the Florida Derby.
Square Face, an unraced 3-year-old, was euthanized as a result of injuries suffered in a morning workout at Santa Anita on Wednesday, the 11th horse lost because of injuries or accidents in training or racing on the sand-and-clay main track since the meeting began on Dec. 26, according to California Horse Racing Board statistics.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Speightful Affair broke through with a career-best performance last December, winning a first-level allowance race by almost seven lengths. A similar effort Friday could make Speightful Affair a stakes winner when she is scheduled to meet six rivals in the $60,000 Am Capable Stakes for fillies and mares going a mile over Aqueduct’s inner track.
Among Speightful Affair’s rivals are Five Grand Girl and Purrfect Bluff, the first- and fourth-place finishers from Sunday’s Patty’s Positive Stakes going six furlongs here.
Trainer Juan Aleman is unlikely to match his 2010 success this year. Last year, he trained Quarter Horse World Champion Apollitical Jess, who won the Los Alamitos Super Derby and Champion of Champions in the fall to clinch the coveted title.
This year, Aleman has another 3-year-old with a lucrative stakes win – Tr Eddie in the $138,250 Los Alamitos Maiden Stakes last Saturday – but nothing of the caliber of Apollitical Jess, who has been retired to stud.
“It’s going to be hard filling that void, but we have a couple that are pretty good,” Aleman said.
