Top Quarter Horse jockey Cody Jensen will miss most of 2011 while recovering from a broken pelvis suffered at Los Alamitos on Jan. 8.
Jensen underwent surgery for the injury Jan. 12 and returned to his home near Los Alamitos on Monday to begin a lengthy recovery that is expected to last at least until the fall and may take until 2012, he said Tuesday.
“Anything less than a year will be a victory,” he said.
Marty McGee
The 2011 Canterbury Park meet will include 28 stakes while missing the longtime centerpiece, the Claiming Crown, it was announced Wednesday by officials at the Shakopee, Minn., track.
Highlights of the 62-day meet, which runs May 20 through Sept. 5, will include the seven-race, $345,000 Minnesota Festival of Champions for statebreds on Sept. 4, and the $75,000 Lady Canterbury, one of three stakes set for July 31. The Lady Canterbury has undergone a purse cut from $100,000.
Russell Baze rode 11 winners at Golden Gate Fields last week – nothing all that unusual for him – but it was definitely an up-and-down week for the meet’s leading jockey.
His week started when his mount, Lady Dawn, clipped heels and fell in Thursday’s first race. No problem. He bounced back up and won the second race with E’volet and then won another race with A K Racer. He also rode two winners Friday with back-to-back scores aboard Movie Star R.N. in the fifth and American Wildcat in the sixth.
Julien Couton knows exactly what he is riding when he gets aboard Positive Response.
“He’s definitely the best 3-year-old at Golden Gate Fields,” said the French jockey after the Pomeroy gelding captured his third straight victory and second in a stakes in Saturday’s $100,000 California Derby.
Trainer Billy Morey won’t argue with that description, but he knows Positive Response will face a much stiffer test on Feb. 12 in the Grade 3, $200,000 El Camino Real Derby.
“I think it’s going to get tougher,” he said. “There may be some strong shippers.”
Arlington Park revealed its proposed 2011 stakes schedule on Wednesday, a schedule that will save close to $500,000 in purse money compared to 2010.
Arlington will host 22 stakes worth $4.2 million in 2011, provided the Illinois Racing Board approves the schedule at its January meeting. That is down from 26 stakes worth more than $4.7 million in 2010, and reflects the financial realities currently at work at Illinois racetracks, which were rebuffed – as usual – by the state legislature earlier this month in their latest effort to bring slot machines to tracks.
ALTOONA, Iowa – Prairie Meadows will offer 33 stakes worth $2.9 million in 2011. The 67-day meet will run on a Monday-Tuesday-Friday-Saturday schedule April 22 through Aug. 13, and on Sunday July, 3.
The meet will be one week longer on the calendar than last year because the track, in conjunction with its horsemen, have agreed to eliminate four Thursday race cards. Prairie Meadows, which includes a large casino, and the Iowa Horsemen’s Benevolemt and Protective Association are in the second year of a five-year agreement regarding the race meet.
HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – The 3-year-olds that trainer Donnie Von Hemel put on the track over opening weekend at Oaklawn Park performed like they worked for the postal service. They delivered despite snow, rain, and fog.
Oaklawn Park battled all of those conditions last week, losing Friday’s opening-day program to the lingering effects of a snowstorm, and then having fog settle over the oval for the Monday card.
NEW ORLEANS – Fair Grounds followers should remember the grass horse named Diamond Tycoon, who exploded onto the local scene during the winter of 2008-2009 with three consecutive Fair Grounds turf wins, the last of which came in the Grade 3 Fair Grounds Breeders’ Cup Handicap. Diamond Tycoon, who now is a Chilean sire, suffered a career-ending injury before he could contest the $500,000 Mervin Muniz later in the meet, but he already had given Andrew McKeever his only stakes win in a training career that began in 2005.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – The best comes last at Aqueduct when racing resumes Thursday following a two-day break, with the four most lucrative races on the card comprising the late pick four.
The sequence kicks off with the richest race of the afternoon, a $43,000 optional claimer with second-level allowance conditions for New York-bred fillies and mares at one mile. Rogue’s Jewel, who came from off the pace to win the New York Oaks at Finger Lakes last summer, will try to get through this condition after three consecutive runner-up finishes for trainer Carlos Martin.
NEW ORLEANS – The 3-year-old filly Fun Filled has talent. Just watch the replay of her career debut, a good-looking grass win on Oct. 3 at Woodbine. But that race was contested at seven furlongs around one turn, and at odds of 1-2 on Dec. 17 at Fair Grounds, Fun Filled set the pace and faded to finish a distant second in a two-turn mile.
