Trainer Richard Small is no stranger to sending out 2-year-olds on short rest for a late-season stakes at Laurel Park. For the third time in the last five years, Small will saddle a runner coming back in less than two weeks when he sends out the unbeaten Side by Side in Saturday’s $50,000 Maryland Juvenile Filly Championship, a 7 1/2-furlong race restricted to Maryland-breds.
PHOENIX – Beautiful Holiday and Table Mesa, first and third in a Turf Paradise optional claimer on Nov. 26, meet for the second straight race in Saturday’s $25,000 City of Phoenix Stakes. The six-furlong event for fillies and mares drew a field of eight.
Jockey Eddie Castro appeared to escape serious injury after being thrown from his mount, Reading Group, during the running of the eighth race at Aqueduct. Jockey Edgar Prado was also involved in the spill and was uninjured, though he did take off his mount in the last race.
Castro, 24, was taken by ambulance to Jamaica Hospital Medical Center, where he had precautionary X-rays taken on his right shoulder, according to his agent, Mike Gonzalez.
Trainer Chris Candies has not started a horse on the Louisiana Champions Day card at his home track of Fair Grounds in close to a decade, but he’ll be firing half of his stable at the rich program on Saturday.
Candies will send out four horses on the card of 11 stakes, with Twilight Ross set for the $150,000 Classic. High Toned goes in the $100,000 Turf, and Southern Invasion and Grand Minit are on deck for the $50,000 Starter.
“We’re running half the barn,” said Candies, who has eight horses in training at Fair Grounds.
Jockey Brian Hernandez Jr. will have to make a judgment call on how to ration Homerun Berti’s energy following the start of Friday’s eighth race at Fair Grounds.
“He can show speed if you want him to, and he can also take back and sit off it,” said Steve Margolis, who trains Homerun Berti. “We’ll let him get out of the gate, have Brian ride after the break. Sometimes, you can’t really handicap until they break.”
Jockey Tyler Baze and his agent, Vic Stauffer, have parted company, both said earlier this week.
Stauffer, 51, said on Wednesday that he will no longer work as an agent, and will focus on announcing at Hollywood Park and television work as a commentator on TVG.
“I’m going to take some time off,” he said. “I said to Tyler, if it wasn’t for him. I would have moved away earlier. He was everything I envisioned when I started this, with his incredible work ethic and upbeat attitude and all the talent.”
INGLEWOOD, Calif. – True Way of Grace won the Barretts Debutante at Fairplex Park in September, but her education is progressing slowly, trainer Alexis Barba insists.
After losing two stakes over 1 1/16 miles at Hollywood Park in the last two months, True Way of Grace starts over that distance for the third time in Saturday’s $300,000 Hollywood Starlet for 2-year-old fillies. This time, she will wear blinkers, which Barba hopes will help the filly improve on a second-place finish in the Sharp Cat Stakes on Nov. 7, her most recent start.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. –For nearly three weeks, trainer David Donk has had to play the role of spectator rather than participant when it comes to racing. A quarantine placed on his Belmont Park barn – a result of a case of equine herpesvirus contracted by one of trainer Chris Englehart’s horses – meant that Donk had to train after regular training hours and he could not run horses from Nov. 20 though Wednesday.
The Grade 3, $800,000 Sunland Park Derby will be conducted over a brand new racing surface when it highlights the New Mexico track’s 77-date meet that opens Friday. Sunland will feature both Thoroughbreds and Quarter Horses during its season, which runs through April 19.
The slots-rich track, which is located just over the border from El Paso, Texas, resurfaced its track during the off season. In addition to putting up a new outside rail around the one-mile oval, eight inches of surface material was removed and replaced.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. – Already this year, trainer Marty Jones has won seven sprint stakes on turf with four horses, including the four-time stakes winner Unzip Me, who was third against males in the Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint at Churchill Downs last month.
Jones has an improving turf sprinter to follow in Blue Jay Attack, who starts in a first-level allowance race over six furlongs on turf at Hollywood Park on Friday.