ETOBICOKE, Ontario - Even though Cobotown Ron had won the allowance prep, his trainer, Analisa Delmas, resisted the temptation to bring her stable star back in Sunday's $300,000 Nijinsky.
"The timing was the main thing," said Delmas, noting that the 1 1/4-mile Nijinsky prep had fallen just two weeks before the main event. "I also figured it would come up very tough, and it did."
ELMONT, N.Y. - Before there was Rachel Alexandra, there was Stardom Bound.
Last year's champion 2-year-old filly, Stardom Bound won the first two starts of her 3-year-old season - both Grade 1 races - and appeared headed for a showdown with Rachel Alexandra in the Kentucky Oaks. But then Stardom Bound finished third in the Grade 1 Ashland at Keeneland in April - ending a five-race winning streak - and emerged from that race "completely wiped out," according to trainer Richard Dutrow Jr.
SHAKOPEE, Minn. - Like any new venture, the Claiming Crown was a concept that drew blank stares and quizzical comments in its formative years. But as the series has matured, its coordinator, Nat Wess, has found horsemen and racing fans to be far more cognizant of its existence and purpose.
"I get very few people now saying, 'What's Claiming Crown?,' which I got a lot of in the early years," said Wess.
ETOBICOKE, Ontario - Last year, trainer Mark Frostad sent out Northern Kraze to record her second career win in the $250,000 Wonder Where. On Saturday, Frostad is hoping for deja vu all over again when he fields one-time winner Forest Uproar for the Wonder Where, a 1 1 1/4-mile turf race for Canadian-bred 3-year-old fillies.
While Northern Kraze had raced twice as a 2-year-old and was making the sixth start of her 2008 campaign in the Wonder Where, Forest Uproar did not debut until this June and has just two outings under her belt.
DEL MAR, Calif. - A rule change enacted earlier this year allowing horses sired by California-based stallions to run in statebred races will have a profound effect on Saturday's $100,000 Fleet Treat Stakes at Del Mar.
Two of the leading contenders in the seven-furlong race for 3-year-old fillies were foaled in other states, but are by stallions that stood in California: Century Park is a Florida-bred by General Meeting, while Dani Reese is a Kentucky-bred by High Demand.
The connections of It's a Bird will appeal the Arkansas Racing Commission's decision to disqualify the horse from his win in the Grade 2, $500,000 Oaklawn Handicap after he tested positive for a banned anti-inflammatory.
Mike Meuser, an attorney representing both Edmund Gann, the owner of the horse, and Marty Wolfson, the trainer, said he was in the process of preparing an appeal that will be filed in circuit court in Little Rock, Ark.
What's old is new again at Saratoga, where the 141st season once again features at least one Grade 1 race on each of the six Saturdays and 15 Grade 1's overall.
Duke of Magenta, we hardly knew you.
The revised prime-time lineup kicks off with the Grade 1 Diana, the coming-out party last year for the eventual filly-mare turf champ Forever Together, and the Grade 2 Jim Dandy, the key Travers prep over the 1 1/8-mile main track, on the first Saturday, Aug. 1.
