WHO'S HOT
Jockeys
Getting off to a fast start is a good sign at any race meet, especially a short meet like Keeneland. Kent Desormeaux did quite well over the first two racing days, winning with four of nine mounts (44 percent). He also rode a second- and a third-place finisher for 67 percent in the money. His ROI is $3.96.
WHO'S HOT
Once again, nobody is doing it any better these days than jockey Paco Lopez. After setting the 2010 one-week standard the previous week with 10 victories, Lopez came back to win a dozen races from March 31-April 4, including hat tricks on the Thursday, Friday, and Sunday cards. Lopez saved perhaps his best performance for , in which he slipped Arson Squad through along the biased rail to register a popular win against older horses. The streak blew the 2010 jockey race wide open and all but assured Lopez of his first Gulfstream Park title.
HOT SPRINGS, Ark. - Although she has trained and raced almost exclusively on synthetic surfaces, being based in Southern California, Zenyatta ran one of the best races of her life here at Oaklawn Park two years ago in the Apple Blossom, and she went around the main track Thursday morning as if reunited with an old friend.
"She was bouncing on the track," said her exercise rider, Steve Willard, after Zenyatta took a one-lap gallop on the one-mile track. "She loves real dirt. She was happy as a pig in pie."
WHO'S HOT
The Chalk
Favorites lost eight straight races opening day on the main track but then went on a 17-for-23 tear, a streak that began with Star Orchid ($4.10) in the March 31 nightcap and went through Cajun Jet ($4.50) in race 4 on Wood Memorial Day.
The post-time choice won 8 of 9 races on April Fool's Day. The only one to be defeated was Taza, who stumbled at the start and settled for second at 55 cents to $1 - the shortest price of the afternoon.
HOT SPRINGS, Ark.- Payton d'Oro ran down pacesetter Distinctive Dixie to win the by a half-length at Oaklawn Park on Wednesday. It was another four and a half lengths back in third to Punta Ballena.
The Bayakoa was part of the Racing Festival of the South, the annual cluster of nine stakes that are spread out over the final week of the meet. The series ends Saturday with the Grade 1, $1 million Arkansas Derby.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - Franny Freud posted an easy victory as the odds-on favorite Wednesday in the at Keeneland, setting up the New York-bred filly for a possible run on the Kentucky Derby undercard.
Always in control after breaking sharply under Garrett Gomez, Franny Freud drew clear to win the 25th running of the $150,000 Beaumont by 4 3/4 lengths.
"She did everything right," said Gomez. "When I set her down, she went ahead and put it out there and sprinted away home."
LEXINGTON, Ky. - Seven older females are entered as would-be challengers to Forever Together when she makes her 6-year-old debut Saturday as the defending champion in the best race on the Blue Grass undercard, the Grade 2 Jenny Wiley Stakes (race 8), but one of her more noteworthy opponents may wait for an easier spot some 24 hours later.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - Andy Durnin got his proverbial 15 minutes of fame as the exercise rider of Fusaichi Pegasus, the strong-willed colt who became the first favorite to win the Kentucky Derby in 21 years when he prevailed for trainer Neil Drysdale in 2000.