SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - Kentucky Derby winner Street Sense drew post 4 and was installed as the 3-5 morning-line favorite for Saturday's $1 million Travers Stakes at Saratoga.
Provided nothing goes wrong between now and Saturday, Street Sense will be the first Kentucky Derby winner to run in the Travers since Thunder Gulch, who won both races in 1995. In 2003, Kentucky Derby winner Funny Cide entered the Travers, but was scratched.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia - Trainer Tak Inouye thinks he has a couple of decent 2-year-olds in Chianti Dancer and Mr. Ichiban. Coming from Inouye, that's saying a lot. He rarely runs his horses where they don't belong, and because he's not afraid to run them for a reasonable claiming price, he usually doesn't keep horses in his barn for very long.
Chianti Dancer, a 2-year-old filly by Amaruk, will try stakes horses in the $50,000 Lassie Stakes on Saturday, and Mr. Ichiban is slated to start in the $50,000 New Westminster on Sunday. Both races are at 6 1/2 furlongs.
Their pedigrees do not immediately appear to cry out for the turf, but the winners of the meet's first stakes for 2-year-olds on grass last Saturday obviously have a future over it. Both Justaclown and Timely Reflection displayed professionalism well beyond their brief careers.
"I was just along for the ride," jockey Quincy Hamilton said after guiding Justaclown to an impressive win in the $75,000 Sunny's Halo for colts and geldings. "This colt was just push button."
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - Street Sense will command the majority of the attention on Saturday's Travers program at Saratoga, while his most immediate victim in this year's Kentucky Derby, Hard Spun, will be the major attraction on the Travers undercard when he goes postward as the likely favorite in the $250,000 King's Bishop Stakes.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. Kentucky Derby winner Street Sense drew post 4 and was installed as the 3-5 morning-line favorite for Saturday's $1 million Travers Stakes at Saratoga.
Street Sense will be the first Kentucky Derby winner since Thunder Gulch in 1995 to run in the Travers. Funny Cide, the 2003 Derby winner, entered the Travers but was scratched.
A field of seven was entered in the Travers, run at 1 1/4 miles over the main track. Carl Nafzger, the trainer of Street Sense, said the post position draw was inconsequential, but nonetheless liked his starting spot.
ETOBICOKE, Ontario - When he learned that Dance Smartly had died last weekend, the memories flooded back for trainer Jim Day here at Woodbine on Wednesday morning.
Day trained numerous champions during his tenure as trainer for Sam-Son Farm, which lasted from 1978 to 1994. Dance Smartly, however, still occupies a special place in Day's back pages.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - The license plate on Tracey Wilkes's car reads BTTW, standing for Big-Time Trainer's Wife, a moniker jokingly placed on her a year ago by a racetrack publicist.
Though most people outside the world of Thoroughbred racing probably don't know Tracey's husband, Ian, he has played a big-time role in the success of Carl Nafzger, trainer of Kentucky Derby winner Street Sense, who will be an odds-on favorite to win Saturday's $1 million Travers Stakes.
AUBURN, Wash. - It has been a magical year for The Great Face, who began his 5-year-old campaign with a world-record-equaling performance at 5 1/2 furlongs on opening night of the Emerald Downs meet and reached a climax with a wire-to-wire victory in Sunday's Grade 3, $400,000 Longacres Mile. In between came three losses, to be sure, but also daylight wins in a 6 1/2-furlong allowance race and in the 1 1/8-mile Mt. Rainier Handicap, which served as his Mile prep.
Jockey Robbie King Jr. solidified his hold on first place in the Fort Erie rider standings with a record-tying six-win performance Tuesday afternoon.
King became just the fourth jockey in the track's 110-year history to ride six winners in the same day. The feat was last accomplished by Gary Stahlbaum in 1977. Hall of Famer Sandy Hawley did it four times in the 1970s. Al Coy set the record in 1958.
BOSSIER CITY, La. - A lack of suitable sprint options for Forty Acres led his connections to try him at two turns, an experiment that has gone so well he will run next month in the Grade 2, $500,000 Super Derby at Louisiana Downs.
Forty Acres's dominant win in the $100,000 Prelude on Saturday earned him a fees-paid berth in the Sept. 22 Super Derby. It was the second straight two-turn victory for Forty Acres, who had impressed earlier in the meet when he romped in an optional claiming sprint on June 9.