ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. - Jockey Jermaine Bridgmohan was named on three horses Sunday at Arlington Park and will shift his tack from Calder Race Course to Arlington this weekend, agent Dennis Cooper confirmed Friday.
ETOBICOKE, Ontario - Jim Day has saddled five Woodbine Oaks winners, the most by any trainer in the 53-year history of the 1 1/8-mile race for Canadian-bred 3-year-old fillies. But when Day sends out Secret Wish in the $500,000 Woodbine Oaks this Sunday, he will be in a much different position than he was with the majority of his winners.
The Belmont Stakes card on Saturday will be shown at all Nassau OTB branches and the Race Palace, according to a release from Nassau Regional Off-Track Betting Corporation.
A disagreement between the New York Racing Association and Nassau OTB resulted in Belmont Park's video signal being blacked out on Channel 74, the OTB cable channel, on the Long Island Cablevision system. But it is available at the OTB sites.
SHAKOPEE, Minn. - The field of 12 assembled for Saturday's renewal of the $50,000 Brooks Fields - one of two stakes on the card - is deep and a case can be made for nearly every starter in the 7 1/2-furlong turf contest.
Trainer Bernell Rhone entered three in the Fields, with Gesundheit and Heza Wild Guy paired as an entry and the late-running Onotheregoestokyo running uncoupled.
ELMONT, N.Y. - Six Grade 1 winners including the 10-year-old gelding Better Talk Now head a deep field of 14 entered for the $400,000 Manhattan Handicap, one of five graded events on Saturday's Belmont Stakes Day card.
In addition to Better Talk Now, who won this Grade 1 race in 2007, the other Grade 1 winners in the 1 1/4-mile turf race are Court Vision, Gio Ponti, Champs Elysees, Marsh Side, and Zambezi Sun.
Gio Ponti beat Court Vision by a nose in the Virginia Derby in the summer, and Court Vision came back to beat Gio Ponti in the Jamaica here last October.
ETOBICOKE, Ontario - The leading contenders for Saturday's $500,000 Woodbine Oaks apparently have struck little fear into the hearts of their less accomplished opponents as a full field of 14 has been entered for Sunday's 1o1/8-mile race.
The draw for the Woodbine Oaks, which is this country's premier test for Canadian-bred 3-year-old fillies, was held at the offsite WEGZ Stadium Bar on Thursday.
ELMONT, N.Y. - Calvin Borel has ridden 31,209 mounts in his 26-year career. Seven have come at Belmont Park, only four on the dirt. None has been at 1 1/2 miles.
Borel's fifth dirt mount at this track won't come until he climbs aboard Kentucky Derby Mine That Bird in Saturday's 141st Belmont Stakes.
ELMONT, N.Y. - At the Kentucky Derby, Mine That Bird was 50-1, the 17th choice in a field of 19. Few saw what was coming. Not Tom Durkin, who called the race for national television. Not even Chip Woolley, the trainer of Mine That Bird.
"The only person more surprised than me winning the Derby seemed to be you," Woolley, joking with Durkin, said at the post position draw Wednesday for the Belmont Stakes.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - It was a Wednesday morning before the Belmont Stakes, and Tom McCarthy, working solo, was excusing himself to empty a wheelbarrow full of soiled straw into a muck pit outside his Churchill Downs shed row.
"Yeah, I'd like to be up there at Belmont Park," said McCarthy. "But things just didn't work out like we'd hoped."
The New York Racing Association has pulled its video signal from the state's Nassau County Off-Track Betting Corp., claiming that the company provided live streaming video of NYRA racing on its Internet site in violation of state law.
The signal was also lost to homes in Suffolk County on Wednesday, though NYRA officials say that was a mistake and hoped to restore that signal in time for Thursday's program.