Less than two months after spring meeting champion Jamie Ness set a Thistledown record for consecutive training victories by visiting the winner's circle nine times without a defeat, veteran horseman Gerald Bennett is poised to match Ness's efforts Friday.
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DRF Past Performances
DEL MAR, Calif. - Winning a $6 million race would make you fat and happy. Trainer Eoin Harty, one of the wittiest guys on the backstretch, is happy. Well Armed, whom Harty trained to win the Dubai World Cup four months ago, is fat.
"I can't get the belly off him," Harty said while feeding Well Armed a carrot at his Del Mar barn. "He looks a little too prosperous."
He's entitled to be that way after taking down a first prize of $3.6 million. And despite the extra weight, Harty is enthusiastic over how Well Armed is training. "Well Armed is super," he said emphatically.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - Though sunshine eventually gave way to rain, Mother Nature couldn't dampen a robust opening day at Saratoga.
A crowd of 25,444 ushered in the 141st season, an increase of 40 percent over last year's crowd of 18,127. The ontrack crowd wagered $3,651,221, an increase of 30 percent over last year's $2,813,982. All-sources handle was $14,216,133, an increase of 24 percent over last year's $11,431,845.
LOS ALAMITOS, Calif. - From the Freaky to the poignant to the remarkable, the major stakes winners at Los Alamitos last Saturday offered a preview for the lucrative Quarter Horse stakes in the second half of the year.
Freaky won his third stakes of 2009 in Saturday's $98,500 Spencer Childers Memorial Championship, enhancing his status as the leading contender for the $750,000 Champion of Champions on Dec. 12.
ETOBICOKE, Ontario - With the turf training course session canceled due to the ongoing rains, Woodbine's main track was a busier place than usual for a Wednesday morning.
The most prominent names on the work tab included Not Bourbon, Sand Cove, and Sligovitiz, all of whom breezed in preparation for upcoming stakes engagements for trainer Roger Attfield.
Not Bourbon, with his regular rider Jono Jones in the irons, was clocked in 1:00.60 for five furlongs.
DEL MAR, Calif. - Jockey Rafael Bejarano, who suffered facial injuries in a spill on July 22, is targeting Aug. 28 for a comeback, according to his agent Joe Ferrer.
The projected return is later than what Bejarano and Ferrer had hoped after the jockey underwent surgery on July 23 for a fractured left cheek and jaw. At the time, there were discussions that Bejarano could return after two to three weeks.
"The target date is Aug. 28," Ferrer said. "One doctor said four weeks. Another said five weeks.
CHESTER, W.Va. - True to the historic nature of having a classic winner in the field, the West Virginia Derby will showcase a classic matchup of speed vs. closer.
Big Drama, the millionaire speedster shipping in from Monmouth Park, will be trying to stay clear of the closing punch of Kentucky Derby winner Mine That Bird when the Grade 2, $750,000 West Virginia is run for the 40th time Saturday at Mountaineer Park.
OCEANPORT, N.J. - Atomic Rain has been downgraded to "unlikely" for the $1.25 million Haskell Invitational on Sunday at Monmouth Park.
"He missed the last few days of training with a sore foot," said Rick Mettee, the New York-based assistant to Saeed bin Suroor for Godolphin Racing. "It looks unlikely that he will make the race."
A final decision was to be made prior to Thursday morning's draw.
"If there is a chance he can go to the track, we may enter him and see how it looks," Mettee said.
Average daily handle on the race cards at Colonial Downs in New Kent, Va., plummeted more than 30 percent compared with last year during the track's recently completed 40-day meet, according to figures provided by the track.
Average handle was $780,365 a day during the meet, compared with $1,118,734 during last year's 45-day meet, according to the track's figures. The decline was almost exclusively tied to a 35 percent drop in handle from off-site sources, where handle fell from $960,834 a day last year to $627,850 this year.