Guiding Hand, winner of the Winsham Lad earlier this meet and an allowance winner here last week, is targeting the $100,000 Sunland Park Handicap. That 1 1/8-mile test is slated for April 21.
o Sunland hosts the Southwest Shootout Handicapping contest on April 21-22. The contest serves as a qualifier for the NTRA/Daily Racing Form National Handicapping Contest, to be held in Las Vegas next winter. The top three finishers from the contest earn a berth in the championship.
It is said that horse racing is a game of numbers. That has been quite evident the first three days of the 105-day spring-summer meet that began at River Downs last Friday. The 40-degree drop in temperature from opening weekend last year resulted in a drop in ontrack handle of more than 20 percent. With high temperatures in the upper 20s both Friday and Saturday, along with intermittent snow flurries, only the heartiest of fans were out on the apron for the races. The open grandstand held only a few heavily dressed observers.
The racing action at Fonner heats up Saturday with the $30,000 Dowd Mile, the main prep for the $100,000 Bosselman/Gus Fonner Stakes April 28.
Stormy Business, trained by Larry Donlin, is the expected favorite in the Dowd. He got his year off to a fast start March 24 with an impressive four-length win in the Tondi Stakes here. Ridden by R. D. Williams, Stormy Business took command through the far turn of the six-furlong Tondi and drew off over a muddy track, earning a 99 Beyer Speed Figure, by far the best of any horse at the meeting.
It took the 8-year-old Peace and Joy many years to develop into a win machine, but only 1:10.40 to stake his claim as the best sprinter at Fairmount Park last Saturday night. Peace and Joy wore down odds-on favorite Mr. Mink to score by 1 3/4 lengths in a $11,413 money allowance at six furlongs. Mr. Mink, who worked faster than the five-furlong track record prior to Saturday's race, had an uncontested lead of over three lengths at one point, but had little left to repel Peace and Joy in the final furlong.
In a place that calls itself "Home of the Biggest Fields," it is only appropriate that Friday night's featured seventh race at Evangeline Downs drew a strong field of 12 Louisiana-bred fillies and mares, each in search of a third win. The 5 1/2-furlong allowance race carries a $31,000 purse.
ETOBICOKE, Ontario - Trainer Jody Hammett is off to a good start this spring here at Woodbine, winning with 3 of his first 4 starters at the meeting.
Hammett, who wintered at Palm Meadows and sent out 3 winners from 17 starters at Gulfstream, has returned with some ready runners.
Johnny Hollywood, who started four times at Gulfstream, capitalized on his fitness edge by winning the first seven-furlong race of the season here last Friday.
But Hammett's other winners here, Kerry Fair and Soothing, both wintered on the farm of his principal client, Herbert Chambers.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - Five were certain, two more were thrown in when entries were taken on Wednesday, but the Grade 1, $750,000 Blue Grass Stakes on Saturday at Keeneland is widely perceived as a two-horse race between Street Sense, the favorite for the May 5 Kentucky Derby, and California invader Great Hunter, who won the Breeders' Futurity over this track last fall against Street Sense.
ARCADIA, Calif. - Last year, Hall of Fame trainer Bobby Frankel went five months between stakes wins in Southern California in the spring and summer.
Considering the prospects he has for major stakes over the next few months, a repeat of that drought is virtually impossible.
Beginning with two stakes this weekend, and continuing through the first month of the Hollywood Park meeting on April 25, Frankel has a strong team to start in stakes races of all values.