Kentucky-based trainer Bernie Flint improved his already impressive record in stakes at Mountaineer Racetrack when his 4-year-old filly High Heritage returned from a five-month layoff to capture Tuesday night's $75,000 Hancock County Handicap.
Since January 2005, Flint is 7 for 23 with runners shipped into the Chester, W.Va., track for stakes.
His 30 percent win mark is nearly double his 2007 overall winning percentage of 17.
BALTIMORE - Leading up to every Kentucky Derby, talk abounds about how certain horses are highly unlikely to win because of statistical improbabilities based on historical precedent. The variables of 2-year-old form, the number of preps at 3, pedigree quirks, and innumerable other data are analyzed to an exhaustive degree.
CHICAGO - The Arlington Park racing week for trainer Christine Janks was to start Thursday with a pair of horses in the daily feature, and Friday looks much the same for the Janks barn. Here the race-9 feature is for high-end female allowance horses or $80,000 claimers at about 1 1/16 miles on grass, and Janks has the near-certain favorite in Chic Dancer, a mare in a love affair with the Arlington grass.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. - The Tin Man is still not acting his age. A 9-year-old gelding, The Tin Man worked a mile Tuesday at Hollywood Park, after which trainer Richard Mandella said the multimillionaire is on target for a May 28 comeback in the Grade 1 Shoemaker Mile.
"He looks like he does every year when he comes back, he's very enthusiastic," Mandella said.
BOSSIER CITY, La. - Trainer Al Stall Jr. has a problem many in his line of work would love to have following Raspberry Wine's win in Saturday's Seven Stars Stakes at Louisiana Downs.
The victory was the mare's fourth consecutive stakes triumph, two on the main track and two on turf.
So where does her future lie, turf or dirt?
"I don't think the surface matters at all," Stall said. "That kind of versatility gives us all kinds of options regarding her future races."
MIAMI - Ask retired Daily Racing Form columnist Joe Hirsch who he was rooting for prior to any important race and his answer would always be the same.
"The best story," Hirsch would reply with a twinkle in his eye.
Well, if Hirsch were around Calder for Sunday's $50,000 Cool Air Stakes on the turf, there is little doubt he would have been pulling for Charlie Papa. And as so often was the case during his remarkable career, he would have found himself rooting home another winner.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Returning from a layoff of over five months in an April 18 allowance race at Keeneland, Arlington Classic winner Kingship had a right to get tired, and he did. After advancing into third with a sixteenth of a mile remaining, he weakened late to finish fifth.
On Thursday at Churchill Downs in the eighth race, a $55,000 third-level allowance at a mile on turf, fitness is no longer an issue for Kingship. He has the benefit of a recent start and seems primed for a return to peak form.
GRAND PRAIRIE, Texas - The connections of Slew's Tizzy will be watching the Preakness closely on Saturday as they try to determine whether their Lone Star Derby winner should advance to the Belmont Stakes on June 9, or point for the Grade 2, $300,000 Ohio Derby at Thistledown on June 2.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - In the blink of an eye, Rush Bay went from cruising to an apparent victory in his season debut to never being able to race again.
Rush Bay, a 5-year-old horse who finished a respectable fourth last fall in the Breeders' Cup Turf in his most recent start, suffered a badly torn suspensory ligament in his left foreleg when surrendering the lead in deep stretch in the sixth race at Churchill Downs on Saturday, losing by a nose to Junior College. Galloping out, Rush Bay fell in the clubhouse turn, and trainer Tom Amoss feared the worst.