ARCADIA, Calif. – Overnight purses at the upcoming Santa Anita winter-spring meeting will rise by approximately 25 percent because of legislation passed earlier this year that raises the takeout on exotic wagers at California tracks.
The increases are more significant for horses competing in lower-claiming levels, and less so in higher-class races.
Trainer Mike Hushion would like to keep going with Nicole H, the authoritative winner of Saturday's Garland of Roses Stakes, but the options are less than ideal.
The New York Racing Association has not released its stakes schedule for 2011, but the Interborough is the traditional New Year's Day feature. The ungraded race, however, is likely to be worth only $65,000, and Hushion would like to find something that is more lucrative and prestigious than that.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Thermometers said it was 35 degrees Monday morning in Queens, but those wandering the backstretch at Aqueduct knew better. With a whipping wind blowing snow flurries around, one couldn’t help think of wanting to be in warmer climes.
STICKNEY, Ill. – Seans Silverdancer won the Pat Whitworth Illinois Debutante here Saturday by more than nine lengths, and the wide win margin was only part of the story. Her trainer, Lisa Merritt, thought the victory came under only the mildest of pressure and saw a fresh horse in Seans Silverdancer when the filly was shipped back to her current base at Churchill Downs on Sunday. Thus, though Seans Silverdancer has beaten only Illinois-breds in her first two starts, she may be considered for open stakes races at a warmer-weather track.
Tampa Bay Downs has raised the purse for the Tampa Bay Derby from $300,000 to $350,000 for 2011. The Tampa Bay Derby, which has been upgraded from a Grade 3 race to a Grade 2, will be run March 12 on a card that also includes the Grade 3, $150,000 Hillsborough Stakes and the $75,000 Suncoast Stakes.
Another key stakes on the schedule is the $125,000 Florida Oaks on Feb. 12.
The Tampa Bay Downs meeting begins on Saturday and runs for 91 days, through May 5.
Aces N Kings, who lost both his action and rider, Calvin Borel, on the final turn of last month’s Grade 3, $1 million Delta Downs Jackpot, is to work Wednesday at Remington Park for a possible start in Saturday night’s $250,000 Springboard Mile.
The Springboard is for 2-year-olds, and it will close out the meet at Remington.
Vinery will sponsor Turfway Park’s most important 3-year-old race, the race previously known as the Grade 2 Lane’s End Stakes, for at least five years starting in 2011.
Under the sponsorship agreement, the race will be known as the Vinery Racing Spiral Stakes, harking back to its original 1972 name, the Spiral Stakes. Lane’s End Farm was the 1 1/8-mile Kentucky Derby prep race’s most recent sponsor. A Grade 2 race in 2010, it will be a Grade 3 contest after the American Graded Stakes Committee downgraded it.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Pete’s Parley’s return to the races was good. His connections hope his return to Aqueduct’s inner track is even better when the 3-year-old son of Freud meets eight other New York-breds in Wednesday featured first-level allowance race.
The six-furlong heat is race eight on a nine-race program that begins the day with a $30,230 pick-six carryover after the wager was not hit Sunday.
ARCADIA, Calif. - Santa Anita's opened its newly installed sand-and-clay track to training for the first time on Monday, although with only 200 horses on the grounds there was seldom more than 10 horses on the track at one time.
The horses who did test the new surface were mostly limited to jogging on a surface that received approximately three-quarters of an inch of rain overnight.
The new surface received favorable reviews from exercise riders and trainers.
Zenyatta’s journey from California to Kentucky was delayed approximately two hours on Monday morning because of inclement weather in Kentucky.
The wildly popular 6-year-old mare was scheduled to leave trainer John Shirreffs’s base at Hollywood Park about 6:30 a.m. for Ontario airport about 50 miles to the east, but the trip did not start until about 8:30 a.m.
