OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Trainer Linda Rice went on a shopping spree last fall at Churchill Downs, claiming 10 horses for $462,500. Rice has run four of those horses back, with Charger winning a maiden special weight race at Parx on Jan. 4 and Flower Moon winning a maiden $40,000 claimer at Aqueduct last Sunday in her second start off the claim.
“We tried something new,” Rice said. “We’ll see how it works out.”
Laurel Park will hold live race cards on five of the next Thursdays and boost all overnight purses by 20 percent through February to make up for a raft of canceled race dates over the past two months, officials for Laurel and the track’s horsemen’s association said on Wednesday.
Lieutenant Dan, one of the top California-breds of 2021, is in the midst of a wintertime vacation designed to have the turf sprinter prepared for a stakes campaign in the second half of 2022.
Lieutenant Dan was second in the Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint at Del Mar in November in his latest start, and the same race at Keeneland on Nov. 5 is a long-term goal, owner and breeder Nick Alexander said earlier this week.
A gelding, Lieutenant Dan has remained with trainer Steve Miyadi at Santa Anita in recent months, and is scheduled to resume training later this winter.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Smile Happy, a 3 1/4-length winner of the Grade 2 Kentucky Jockey Club Stakes at Churchill Downs in late November, will continue breezing every Saturday at Gulfstream Park ahead of his 3-year-old debut in the Holy Bull as trainer Ken McPeek plots out a course for his Kentucky Derby hopefuls.
Smile Happy has breezed each of the last two Saturdays (Jan. 1 and 8) alongside Tiz the Bomb, with the latest being a half-mile team work in 48.80 seconds.
“They’ll be workmates at least the next few weeks,” said McPeek.
Lone Rock will launch his 7-year-old campaign next month at Oaklawn Park.
Trainer Robertino Diodoro said Tuesday that the millionaire is headed for the Grade 3, $600,000 Razorback Handicap on Feb. 12.
“We’d been talking over a few different options and think that’s the best one right now,” said Diodoro, who trains Lone Rock for Flying P Stable and R.A. Hill Stable.
Make It Big and Osbourne are headed down different paths to the Kentucky Derby following their one-two finish in the $400,000 Springboard Mile last month at Remington Park.
Make It Big picked up 10 qualifying points for the Kentucky Derby when he won the Springboard by a half-length to remain unbeaten in three starts. He earned a Beyer Speed Figure of 84.
“He had his first work back Monday,” trainer Saffie Joseph Jr. said of a three-eighths breeze at Gulfstream Park.
ARCADIA, Calif. – The Chosen Vron, a graded stakes-winning California-bred who is currently sidelined, will target a comeback in spring or summer. Eric Kruljac trains the 4-year-old gelding, who came out of a stakes victory Nov. 5 at Turf Paradise with an issue.
“He had filling in a stifle, and it turns out he’s been running with OCD,” Kruljac said, referring to osteochondritis dissecans. The disease, which affects a horse’s bones and joints, is treatable.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Fashionably Fast, whose half-dozen stakes victories include the 2020 California Cup Sprint, was conspicuously absent from the nominations for this year’s California Cup Sprint on Saturday at Santa Anita. But the 7-year-old gelding is not done yet.
Fashionably Fast finished sixth Nov. 21 in a stakes race at Del Mar, after which trainer Dean Pederson initially thought he needed a vacation.
“He was a little knocked out. I was going to turn him out,” he said. “But he’s 7 years old, and they get a little smarter.”
Officials at Laurel Park in Maryland will decide over the next 48 hours whether to resume live racing as of Sunday and add additional race dates next week to make up for recent cancelations brought on by weather and continuing problems with its main dirt track, the officials said in a conference call with horsemen on Tuesday afternoon.
It’s not like Knicks Go has anything to prove at this point, but he still impressed his Eclipse Award-winning trainer in a Fair Grounds workout on Sunday, the third-to-last work before Knicks Go ships to Florida to end his career in the Pegasus World Cup Invitational at Gulfstream Park.
Knicks Go, who won the Pegasus last year, officially clocked 1:14 for six furlongs, with trainer Brad Cox timing his seven-furlong gallop-out in 1:26.20, his mile in 1:40.20.
