ARCADIA, Calif. – Hit the Road and Smooth Like Strait were Grade 1 winners in one-mile turf races in California in 2021, a season in which they met three times.
This year, they are unlikely to appear in the same race until well into the spring.
Smooth Like Strait has not raced since he finished a game second by a half-length to 2-1 favorite Space Blues in the Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Mile on Nov. 6 at Del Mar. Smooth Like Strait, who won the Grade 1 Shoemaker Mile last May, recently rejoined trainer Michael McCarthy’s stable at Santa Anita.
Ginobili, a Grade 2 winner in 2021 who was second in the Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile at Del Mar in November, has been invited to the $1.5 million Riyadh Dirt Sprint at King Abdulaziz Racetrack on Feb. 26 in Saudi Arabia, trainer Richard Baltas said.
The lucrative Group 3 race is run at six furlongs on the undercard of the $20 million Saudi Cup.
“There is a chance we will go,” Baltas said. “It’s a lot of money and he’s a gelding.”
ARCADIA, Calif. – Flightline, the undefeated colt who cruised to three easy wins last year, is in regular training at Santa Anita and will likely race in March.
Trainer John Sadler said Friday that Flightline is galloping on a daily basis and that a specific race goal has not been determined.
Flightline won his stakes debut in the Grade 1 Malibu Stakes for 3-year-olds at seven furlongs on Dec. 26.
“We’re right in the middle of planning stuff,” Sadler said. “He’ll probably be starting to work at the end of January. We’re looking at something in March.”
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – When a 3-year-old filly named Comedic finished second as a 4-5 favorite in a five-furlong Tapeta race Jan. 8 at Gulfstream, she became the first-ever starter in Florida for Simon Callaghan, who has been training in Southern California since 2010.
“We sent her to Florida to see if she could break her maiden going five-eighths on the turf,” Callaghan explained by phone this week. “It’s the most speed-favoring kind of race there is at this time of year. We don’t have turf races that short here in California until Del Mar.”
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – They say that once you’ve run a horse in the Kentucky Derby, you want to do it every year. Vicki Oliver and Brian Klatsky wouldn’t disagree.
Oliver, now in her 24th year of training, and Klatsky – who with Brendan O’Brien and Braxton Lynch oversees the BBN Racing partnerships – are looking to go down the Derby trail again this year with a gelding named Trademark. In 2021, they were represented by the 14th-place finisher, Hidden Stash, in their first experience with a Derby runner.
David Carroll, the assistant who runs the day-to-day operations of trainer Mark Casse’s Fair Grounds barn, does not need to confer with the exercise rider to determine how Pappacap has been doing since arriving in New Orleans from Florida in the second half of December.
“I gallop him myself every day,” Carroll said. “He’s a pleasure to be around, really. He does everything very nice and easily. He can get a little bit warm, but that’s just him. If you see him getting warm in the post parade, I wouldn’t look at it negatively.”
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Irad Ortiz Jr. could be sidelined three to four more weeks after initially being diagnosed with a small fracture in a knee this week, although it’s possible he could return sooner after seeking out a second medical opinion, according to Steve Rushing, agent for the jockey.
Rushing said late Wednesday that the knee may only be contused, and not fractured, and Ortiz will be reevaluated Tuesday.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Dissatisfied with the way she has been training recently, the connections of unbeaten Classy Edition did not enter her Wednesday for Saturday’s $100,000 Franklin Square Stakes, creating a bit of a wide-open running of the 6 1/2-furlong race for New York-bred 3-year-old fillies at Aqueduct.
