VANCOUVER, British Columbia – Trick of the North showed that he hasn’t lost a step as a 9-year-old when he came from off the pace to upset Spaghetti Mouse by a half-length in Monday’s B.C. Cup Classic at Hastings.
The Classic was one of seven stakes races restricted to B.C.-breds that made up the bulk of the B.C. Cup Day card
It was the first win in the Classic for trainer Barbara Heads. She isn’t sure when or where Trick of the North will start next.
ETOBICOKE, Ontario – Trainer Sid Attard will be holding a pair of aces in Friday’s fourth race, when he runs Jungle Wave and Utterly Cool in the 6 1/2-furlong allowance on turf, that serves as the prep for the Aug. 29 Play the King Stakes.
Jungle Wave was a $62,500 claim in the spring of 2009 by Tucci Stable. He went on to win this race last year, along with the Grade 2 Play the King, which was a tune-up for the Grade 1 Woodbine Mile. In the $1 million Woodbine Mile, he finished a respectable fourth behind Ventura, Ferneley, and Sterwins after leading at the eighth pole.
DEL MAR, Calif. – The North American tour for the 2-year-old filly Final Mesa arrives at Del Mar on Friday for the $150,000 Sorrento Stakes. If the result is anything like her previous races, she will leave town after an impressive victory.
Final Mesa has won three races easily – a maiden race at Keeneland in April, the Polly Drummond Stakes at Delaware Park in May, and the My Dear Stakes at Woodbine by 7 3/4 lengths in June.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Trainer Eduardo Caramori is aiming a little high on Saturday at Saratoga in the Grade 1 Whitney Handicap, in which he will send out the longest shot in the race, the unheralded South American import Jardim. But 24 hours before that race, Caramori will saddle another of his boys from Brazil, Lignon’s Hero, whose powerful North American debut at Churchill Downs six weeks ago makes him a formidable factor in Friday’s feature, the $70,000 John’s Call for older long-distance turf runners.
The highly successful combination of trainer Jonathan Sheppard and George Strawbridge’s Augustin Stable will ship in a lightly raced filly and a well-accomplished 7-year-old gelding for Friday night’s turf stakes doubleheader at Penn National Race Course.
AUBURN, Wash. – Emancipated has been around the block a few times during his three-plus seasons on the racetrack, winning 6 of 32 starts, with 7 seconds and 10 thirds. That experience could serve him well Friday against four rivals in the featured seventh race at Emerald Downs, a first-level allowance with a $25,000 optional claiming price.
There are just enough seven-figure futurities at Los Alamitos in the final months of the year to keep the Balgo Racing Team stars from facing each other.
After Hot Hitter gave the stable its second major futurity win of 2010 in last Saturday’s $428,000 Governor’s Cup Futurity, Balgo owner Jose Gonzalez said both Hot Hitter and West Coast Hawk, the winner of the Kindergarten Futurity in May, are bound for the Pacific Coast Quarter Horse Racing Association Futurity trials on Sept. 11. The $450,000 final is on Oct. 2.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia – A future star could emerge out of the third race at Hastings on Friday night. The maiden special weight race for 2-year-olds going 3 1/2 furlongs is loaded with horses that have shown a lot of potential in the mornings. Their connections will find out if the promise they have shown in their works will be fulfilled when they run in an actual race.
None of That. trained by Jim Ellickson, certainly has the pedigree to be a good one, and he figures to be one of the favorites in the nine-horse field that will go as race 3 on the eight-race card.
OCEANPORT, N.J. – Get Serious will bid for a Monmouth Park turf stakes hat trick in the $200,000 Red Bank on Labor Day weekend.
It would be quite a feat, if the 6-year-old New York-bred Get Serious could win a trio of Grade 3 stakes in one meet.
He put himself in position to pull it off with a neck win over Violon Sacre last Sunday in the Grade 3 Oceanport, the main event on the Haskell Day undercard.