OLDSMAR, Fla. – Oh, great. Local forecasters are calling for a 100 percent chance of rain for the biggest day of the Tampa Bay Downs meet Saturday, although the prospect of a sloppy track sure didn’t keep horsemen from flooding the entry box for the Tampa Bay Derby.
A capacity field of 12 3-year-olds was entered here Wednesday for the Tampa Bay Derby, the only points qualifier toward the May 7 Kentucky Derby scheduled for this weekend or next.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Umberto Rispoli is embracing the challenge that awaits him when he moves his tack from Southern California to New York next month.
“If you want to be one of the best, you have to compete with the best,” Rispoli said Tuesday in a telephone interview.
The purses of 21 of 39 stakes at the Del Mar summer meeting have been increased this year as the track continues to recover from prize money reductions forced by the pandemic in recent years.
The stakes program will be worth a record $8.275 million, compared to $7.45 million in 2021. The track offered $5.25 million in stakes purses in the pandemic-ravaged 2020 summer meeting.
Strong handle in 2021 has allowed for an increase in stakes purses.
HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – On any given Saturday, the 31-year-old Staton Flurry can be found parking cars across the street from Oaklawn Park.
But this Saturday Flurry will be in the track’s paddock, standing alongside one of the top mares in the country. He’s a co-owner of Shedaresthedevil, an Eclipse Award finalist in 2021 who will launch her 5-year-old season in the Grade 2, $350,000 Azeri.
The 1 1/16-mile stakes drew nine fillies and mares, including champion Ce Ce, recent Houston Ladies’ Classic winner Pauline’s Pearl, and Remington Park Oaks winner Lady Mystify.
Eight new names are among the 23 individual betting interests in the fourth of five pools in the 2022 Kentucky Derby Future Wager, which opens Friday along with the Kentucky Oaks Future Wager.
Both pools open Friday at noon Eastern, with closing time for Pool 4 set for Sunday at 6 p.m. and the Oaks pool closing 30 minutes later.
The 20-cent Golden pick six paid $1,889 on Monday at Golden Gate Fields on a day with a mandatory payout and a seven-figure pool of new money.
The bet began with a carryover of $147,144 from Sunday. Bettors added $1,366,651 to the wager that is paid out entirely when there is a single ticket or on programs with a mandatory payout.
Eleven horses in the four $100,000 stakes scheduled for Tuesday at Parx racetrack in Philadelphia have scratched, with the vast majority of those scratches coming from trainers based outside Pennsylvania who passed on shipping to the track in the wake of a quarantine of two barns there.
The scratches include four horses each in the Society Hill Stakes and the City of Brotherly Love Stakes, reducing the Society Hill to seven entrants and the City of Brotherly Love to four entrants. The Main Line Stakes had one scratch, and the Rittenhouse Square Stakes had two scratches.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Sunday’s local work tab here was a large one with the best move of the day turned in by Drain the Clock. He went a half-mile in 46.02, under a hold to finish, before continuing on with tons of energy when asked and pulling up after six furlongs in 1:11.90. The work gave trainer Saffie Joseph Jr. all the encouragement he needs to ship the Grade 1 winner to Dubai for the $2 million Golden Shaheen at Meydan on March 26.
Dowagiac Chief’s five-length romp in the Black Gold Stakes for 3-year-old grass horses Saturday yielded a career-best 88 Beyer Speed Figure. Now a three-time winner from six grass starts, Dowagiac Chief, if all goes well, runs back in the $400,000 Transylvania Stakes on April 8 at Keeneland.
“He was able to control things from start to finish Saturday,” said trainer Tom Amoss. “The question is what is he going to do when he moves into a race with more serious competition in it.”
That trainer Bret Calhoun has a horse for the Fair Grounds Oaks comes as no surprise, but Calhoun’s intended starter in the Louisiana Derby is less well known.
Kupuna finished second to Cyberknife in a highly rated first-level dirt-route allowance race on Feb. 19 at Fair Grounds and will get a chance March 26 in the $1 million Louisiana Derby, Calhoun said Monday. Kupuna won an Oaklawn maiden race two starts ago and earned a career-best 82 Beyer Speed Figure last month.
