On a gloomy and muddy day, there's nothing like a Dry Martini, and the 5-year-old gelding poured it on through the stretch to draw away from five rivals in Saturday's Grade 3, $110,500 Stuyvesant Handicap.
Dry Martini was off a beat slow and trailed by seven lengths early, as Temporary Saint and Brilliant Son battled through opening fractions of 24.16 seconds and 47.43 while pressed from the outside by Solar Flare and Ravel.
Hoosier Park in Anderson, Ind., canceled racing after two races on Saturday due to heavy rain the previous 24 hours that rendered the track unusable, according to the jockeys. The $100,000 Frances Slocum was scheduled to be run as the seventh race on the card.
It is a statebred race, so I will have to call the commission in the morning and see when we can reschedule it, said racing secretary Butch Cook.
The Hoosier Park meet is scheduled to end next Sunday.
NEW ORLEANS - It is not every day that one can mingle with the entire dark-suit-clad board of Churchill Downs Inc. and five scantily clad Las Vegas-style showgirls at 8:30 in the morning. But that was the scene Friday at Fair Grounds, where the early opening of the 2008-09 racing season came four hours after the official ribbon-cutting on the new 609-machine slot parlor that has put CDI fully into the casino-gaming business.
MIAMI - Churchill Downs Inc. said on Friday it has barred leading jockey Paco Lopez from riding throughout the remainder of the 2008-09 Tropical at Calder meeting, which runs through Jan. 2, 2009. The ban also applies to all other racetracks owned and operated by CDI during the same period.
A push to reach more simulcast outlets and in-home wagering markets helped Suffolk Downs post increases in overall handle in 2008 despite decreases in attendance and ontrack handle.
The East Boston track's average daily all-sources handle of $1,000,492 on its races for the 102-day meet was up nearly 11 percent from last year's 100-day average. The increase was fueled by a 13 percent rise in offtrack and account wagering on Suffolk races.
Laurel Park on Friday closed its backstretch indefinitely to ship-ins and began prohibiting horses from leaving the grounds after a second test on a 2-year-filly stabled there confirmed that she is positive for the highly contagious disease equine herpesvirus.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. Theres something better than busting a slump with a winner and thats busting a slump with two winners.
John McKee had been winless from his first 49 mounts at the Churchill Downs fall meet before he guided Not Me But U to a 27-1 upset in the third race Thursday. After sitting out the fourth race, McKee was right back at it, taking the fifth race aboard another big-priced winner, Nafass ($33).
I was hoping this would happen sooner than later, said McKee, a 27-year-old native of Cincinnati.
ETOBICOKE, Ontario - Trainer Gail Cox couldn't help feeling a twinge of regret when she saw the six-horse field for Sunday's $250,000 Coronation Futurity at Woodbine.
Silver Rocket, a colt Cox conditions for Eric Sprott, had finished second behind Utterly Cool here in the Oct. 26 Cup and Saucer, a 1 1/16-mile race over yielding turf. Utterly Cool, who was looming as the favorite for the 1 1/8-mile Coronation Futurity, was sidelined by ankle surgery on Monday.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. - Owner Ahmed Zayat, who pulled his horses out of California in the summer of 2007 because he did not want to race them over the Del Mar Polytrack, is sending a string to California next week, according to Bob Baffert and Mike Mitchell, who will train for him.
The number of Zayat-owned horses that will be sent to California is unclear. Sobhy Sonbol, Zayat's racing manager, was not available for comment. Baffert and Mitchell said on Friday that they would learn more this weekend as to what horses would be arriving.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. - The Grade 1-winning 3-year-old filly Zaftig has been retired from racing after tearing the suspensory ligament in her left hind leg, her connections said Friday.
Zaftig, who beat Indian Blessing in the Grade 1 Acorn at Belmont Park in June, was pointing to a start against males in the Grade 1 Cigar Mile at Aqueduct on Nov. 29. On Thursday, Zaftig worked five furlongs in 1:01.49 over Belmont Park's training track. An ultrasound done later that morning revealed the tear.
