You wouldn’t want to compare Cathy’s Crunches to Blind Luck, the likely winner of this year’s Eclipse for 3-year-old fillies, but there are some similarities.
Both won their debuts at Calder and both were then privately purchased by trainer Jerry Hollendorfer and Mark DeDomenico.
Blind Luck is a multiple Grade 1 winner, but Cathy’s Crunches did something Saturday that her more accomplished stablemate has never attempted when she beat males in the Golden Nugget.
Trainer Steve Specht’s fall meeting at Golden Gate Fields has been a lot like the racing career of his entrant in Friday’s Grade 3, $100,000 All American, Massone.
Specht has five wins from his first 28 starters. But he also has 12 seconds and three thirds.
Massone has earned $477,342 during his 24-race career, but he has only two wins to go with six seconds and eight thirds.
MIAMI – Steve Dwoskin accomplished a lifelong goal during the 2010 Calder meet – winning his first ever trainer’s title to go along with yet another owner’s championship. He did it with an assortment of claiming horses and a few allowance types mixed in.
The fastest sprinter in the history of Illinois racing, age-defying Coach Jimi Lee, hasn’t actually raced in Illinois since June 2009, but the 10-year-old gelding is scheduled to make his first Hawthorne appearance in more than two years when he starts in the featured sixth race on Wednesday.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Though stakes action doesn’t begin until Thanksgiving, four allowance races, topped by a pair of open-company, $48,000 races at one mile, are on tap Wednesday as the final week of racing on the main track gets underway.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Six of seven remaining graded stakes on the 2010 New York Racing Association calendar are to be run this week, beginning with the $100,000 Fall Highweight Handicap, the traditional Thanksgiving Day feature, followed by the $150,000 Top Flight Handicap on Black Friday, and Saturday’s quartet of the Hill ‘n’ Dale Cigar Mile, Gazelle, Remsen, and Demoiselle.
NEW ORLEANS – The gang’s all here – or most of them are. Trainers Tom Amoss, Steve Asmussen, and Al Stall, New Orleans standbys, will be well represented on opening day of the Fair Grounds meet Thursday. And the fact that opening day is Thursday − the traditional Thanksgiving opener rather than the early-November start employed the last two seasons – probably has something to do with that.
VINTON, La. – Gourmet Dinner and Decisive Moment could get a rematch at Gulfstream Park.
The one-two finishers from Saturday’s Grade 3, $1 million Delta Downs Jackpot are both being considered for a start in the Grade 3, $400,000 Holy Bull on Jan. 30. The horses left Louisiana on Sunday for their Calder headquarters, with Gourmet Dinner’s 2 1/4-length win in the Jackpot earned him a career-high Beyer Figure of 93.
Based on how thoroughly Quantum Miss dominated open company maiden special weight company, she looks like a huge threat when she faces 11 Pennsylvania-bred foes in Wednesday night’s $75,000 Blue Mountain Juvenile for 2-year-old fillies at Penn National.
The six-furlong Juvenile goes as race 5 on a nine-race card that begins at 6:30 p.m. Eastern.
ETOBICOKE, Ontario – There will be nine races on Wednesday night’s card at Woodbine Racetrack, instead of the usual eight, and Lookinoutforangels returns from a layoff in the finale, a seven-furlong Ontario-sired allowance for fillies and mares.
Lookinoutforangels went to the sidelines for nearly a year after her victory in an Ontario-sired allowance for nonwinners of two in August of 2009, and she missed the board in her first three starts at this stand.
