INGLEWOOD, Calif. – The $300,000 Clement Hirsch Stakes on Saturday may be the last career start in California for Zenyatta, if the undefeated two-time champion runs as expected in the Grade 1 race at Del Mar.
While watching Zenyatta jog and gallop on Hollywood Park’s main track on Tuesday, trainer John Shirreffs said the popular 6-year-old mare was scheduled to be entered for the Hirsch on Wednesday, with a decision on her participation to be finalized after she trains on Del Mar’s Polytrack synthetic surface on Thursday and Friday.

AUBURN, Wash. – Mulcahy was being touted as an Emerald Downs stakes contender early this summer, but circumstances have changed, and Thursday, the former Emerald Derby champion is scheduled to face five rivals in a $7,500 claimer for older horses at 6 1/2 furlongs.

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – The first graded stakes race of the meet for the steeplechasers at Saratoga on Thursday finds the training juggernauts of Jonathan Sheppard and Tom Voss with, collectively, a full house, and a handful of others trying to top that formidable hand in the Grade 2, $75,000 A.P. Smithwick Memorial.

ETOBICOKE, Ontario – The pickings are slim on Thursday’s eight-race card at Woodbine. The featured second race, an allowance prep for the Aug. 28 Ontario Colleen Stakes, drew just five 3-year-old fillies, who will meet over seven furlongs on the turf, for a purse of $91,100.

Redverse should be favored. She was a non- threatening sixth in her May 23 season opener on Polytrack in the La Lorgnette Stakes.

Trainer Kiaran McLaughlin said he will consider both the King’s Bishop at seven furlongs and the $1 million Travers at 1 1/4 miles as potential next starts for Haskell Invitational runner-up Trappe Shot.
McLaughlin felt his horse was compromised by a bad start in the Haskell, but added that it might have made the difference of getting beat two lengths by Lookin At Lucky instead of four.
“He got the jump on us and he ran huge,” McLaughlin said. “We proved we fit with these types; we always felt like we did.”

DEL MAR, Calif. – Uncle Jeep, a former $16,000 claimer who has been successful in turf sprints this year, may give trainer Jack Carava his elusive first winner of the Del Mar meeting on Thursday.

Carava is winless with his first seven starters, which he said has not been a surprise. A private trainer for La Canada Stable, Carava had a successful Hollywood Park spring-summer meeting earlier this year, winning 18 races, or with 26 percent of his starters.

“We were definitely forecasting a slow start, and it may be a slow first half [at Del Mar],” Carava said.

Haynesfield, the Suburban Handicap winner, completed preparations for his expected start in Saturday’s Grade 1, $750,000 Whitney Handicap by working four furlongs in 49.06 seconds Tuesday morning over the training track at Belmont Park.
Track clockers caught Haynesfield’s first quarter in 24.81 seconds and his second quarter in 24.25. He galloped out five furlongs in 1:02.80

ETOBICOKE, Ontario – Trainer Martin Jones had made his first and only previous visit to Woodbine in 1995, when he was working with his father, trainer Gary Jones, and watched Morgana finish sixth in the E.P. Taylor Stakes.

On Monday, Jones was back at Woodbine to send out Unzip Me as the odds-on favorite in the Royal North, a six-furlong turf race for fillies and mares that offered Grade 3 status and a purse of $157,400.

Notoriously ($10.60) was much the best in the $50,000 Northlands Oaks for 3-year-old fillies at Northlands Park Monday.

With Tony Maragh aboard, Notoriously stalked an honest pace set by Voodoo Youdo, took the lead at the six-furlong mark and proceeded to draw off to win the one-mile feature by 6 1/2 lengths over heavily favored Shifty Time. Among the Willows made a late move to finish third. The final time was 1:40.60.Trained by Rod Cone, Notoriously earned $30,000 for her owner, Darrell Landry.

Stachys captured the $75,000 Manitoba Derby, Ruby’s Big Band won the $50,000 Assiniboia Oaks via a disqualification, and Paris By Night prevailed in the $30,000 Graduation as horses based at Canterbury Park dominated the showpiece card of the Assiniboia Downs season on Monday.