ARCADIA, Calif. – Honour the Deputy can prove to be a bargain, or a bust, when he starts in Saturday’s $200,000 Strub Stakes at Santa Anita.
The Grade 2 race for 4-year-olds over 1 1/8 miles will be Honour the Deputy’s stakes debut, and first start for Barnett Stables, Mark Dedomenico, and George Todaro since trainer Jerry Hollendorfer acquired the gelding on their behalf privately last fall.
HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – The time off that trainer Tim Ritchey gave Elite Alex to grow into his large frame appears to be working in the horse’s favor this winter at Oaklawn Park. Elite Alex turned in a notable breeze over the weekend and remains on pace to make his stakes debut in the Grade 3, $250,000 Southwest on Feb. 21.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Matto Mondo, unraced since a third-place finish in the 2009 Santa Anita Handicap, returns to racing in a $68,000 allowance race on the hillside turf course at Santa Anita on Friday. The allowance race will be Matto Mondo’s first start since recovering from a tendon injury, and a race trainer Richard Mandella cautions that the 7-year-old gelding needs.
“I want to get a race into him and get him going again,” Mandella said. “He probably needs to get the cobwebs out. I don’t think it’s his best trip. He’s better going longer.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Rick Violette understands why some may question his sanity wanting to travel from south Florida to New York at this time of year. Heck, even he’s doing it.
“Obviously, I have no brain cells if I’m trying to come up there,” Violette, whose Wednesday JetBlue flight from Florida to New York was canceled, said by phone from the Palm Meadows training center.
The 7-year-old gelding Jess You and I was hardly acting his age last weekend.
In Saturday’s trials for the $214,550 Los Alamitos Winter Championship, Jess You and I set the fastest qualifying time for the 400-yard final on Feb. 19, showing he is still capable of adding to a remarkable career of 16 wins in 31 starts and earnings of $1,646,271.
Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs, Ark., has canceled its nine-race Thursday card after more than three inches of rain fell in the area on Tuesday, and freezing temperatures overnight kept the track from being open for training on Wednesday.
A significant purse boost for the Black-Eyed Susan Stakes and the return of the Grade 3 Allaire du Pont Distaff are the two biggest changes on the proposed spring stakes schedule at Pimlico.
The schedule, released Wednesday by the Maryland Jockey Club after it was endorsed by both the Maryland Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association and Maryland Horse Breeders Association, still must be approved by the Maryland Racing Commision, which meets Feb. 15 at Laurel Park.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Sheikh Rashid bin Mohammed al Maktoum, who races under the nom de course of Zabeel Racing, has purchased an interest in Morning Line from Thoroughbred Racing Legends Stable. Morning Line, runner-up in the Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile, figures to be among the favorites in Saturday’s Grade 1 Donn Handicap at Gulfstream Park.
Tom Amoss won the race last year with a filly, so why can’t history repeat? The eight-time leading trainer at Fair Grounds is back in the $40,000 South Mississippi Owners and Breeders Stakes with a proven entity in Red Hot Maria, so here’s the answer to that rhetorical question: It most certainly can.
Amoss sent out Red Hot Buddha to win the South Mississippi by 3 3/4 lengths last February at the New Orleans track, and when the six-furlong race is run Friday for the 16th time, Red Hot Maria will be the only filly in a field of 10 3-year-olds.
