INGLEWOOD, Calif. – Trainer Doug O’Neill’s best chance in Saturday’s California Cup program at Hollywood Park is arguably Enriched in the $150,000 Classic, the richest of 10 races on the card.
By the time Enriched starts, O’Neill may already have had a successful day. Wednesday morning, as entries were being compiled, the trainer projected that he would have five starters in the seven stakes. The other races on the programs are for maidens.
Aces N Kings has asserted himself as one of the best 2-year-olds in the Mid-South region as a winner of 5 of 6 starts, and next month he will make the leap into graded competition. Ed Dodwell, who owns the horse with his wife, Caroline, said Aces N Kings is headed for the Grade 3, $1 million Delta Jackpot at Delta Downs on Nov. 20.
Dodwell said Calvin Borel will ride Aces N Kings, whose lone loss came by a head in the $80,000 Sunday Silence at Louisiana Downs in his last start Sept. 25.
LEXINGTON, Ky. – Keeneland Race Course will end its 17-day fall meet Saturday with a terrific running of the $150,000 Fayette Stakes, a Grade 2 race that drew a field to match, including colts who accounted for the two major 3-year-old events run over Polytrack here last spring.
Stately Victor, winner of the Grade 1 Blue Grass Stakes in April, was assigned post 1 in a field of 10, while Exhi, whose four wins in as many starts over synthetic surfaces include the Grade 2 Coolmore Lexington, got post 7.
With 22 pre-entries, easily the most of any of the 14 Breeders' Cup races this year, there won't be many more wide-open BC events than the $1 million Filly and Mare Sprint. The race surely will net a full gate of 14, with the first also-eligible, Rinterval, probably cracking the lineup because Unrivaled Belle is far more likely to opt out in favor of the BC Ladies' Classic.
ELMONT, N.Y. – In the fall of 1998, a 3-year-old filly named Heaven’s Command came to North America from Europe and in her first start here won a listed turf stakes over Belmont Park’s turf course. A dozen years later, Heaven’s Heart, a daughter of Heaven’s Command, will attempt to do the same thing.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. – October has been a month of mixed results for jockey Alonso Quinonez.
He rode Switch to a game second against Zenyatta in the Lady’s Secret Stakes on Oct. 2 and later that day won the Grade 1 Goodwood Stakes on Richard’s Kid. It looked as if Quinonez had a solid foundation for Breeders’ Cup mounts at Churchill Downs next month, but the mount on Switch was given to Joel Rosario and Richard’s Kid was put in quarantine for an eventual trip to Dubai.
LEXINGTON, Ky. – When fresh, racehorses sometimes want to do too much too fast. That might well have been the case earlier in the Keeneland meet with a 3-year-old named Lonesome Street, who got a little antsy in the early stages of a race that was his first in nearly seven weeks.
Eight are likely to go in a Breeders’ Cup Turf that looks very much like a rematch between Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe winner Workforce and Arc fourth Behkabad. In terms of class and the ability to stay 1 1/2 miles, there is nothing else that appears capable of winning the race, on paper at least.
Leave it to a couple of former Quarter Horse guys to have the speed of the Grade 1, $2 million Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies.
A Z Warrior, trained by Bob Baffert, and Soundwave, trained by Ronny Werner, were among the 13 horses pre-entered in the 1 1/16-mile race on Monday. And both figure to be prominent when the Churchill Downs starter springs the latch for the Juvenile Fillies on Nov. 5.