ETOBICOKE, Ontario – Grade 3 Marine Stakes runner-up Keep Grinding is the tepid 4-1 favorite for the 162nd running of Sunday’s $1 million Queen’s Plate at Woodbine, North America’s oldest annually run stakes.
Keep Grinding is owned by 17-year-old Joshua Attard and trained by his grandfather Tino. They picked post 8 during the two-tiered draw on Wednesday. Rafael Hernandez has the mount.
“He always tries,” Joshua Attard said. “He never gives up.”
ETOBICOKE, Ontario – Miss Speedy lived up to her name last Sunday when she put up a 90 Beyer Speed Figure in her four-length Ontario-sired allowance score going 1 1/16 miles on the Tapeta. It was the highest Beyer earned by a 3-year-old filly at Woodbine this year.
The results of the $60,000 Aventura on Saturday at Gulfstream Park surely had some racing fans going back a few generations in time.
Perfect Silent Cat gave Sharon Boland her first stakes win in a training career that officially began in February 2020 when driving to a three-length score in the Aventura under Luca Panici. The name Boland might have rung a bell to anyone familiar with racing history, and sure enough, Sharon is the daughter of Bill Boland, who in 1950 won the Kentucky Derby aboard Middleground as a 16-year-old apprentice.
Trainer Steve Asmussen said early this week that the Grade 3, $400,000 Oklahoma Derby on Sept. 26 at Remington Park is the likely next stop for Super Stock, who drew clear late Sunday in winning the signature race of the 31-day Ellis meet, the $200,000 Ellis Park Derby.
The 1 1/8-mile Oklahoma Derby would be the sixth straight derby for Super Stock. Preceding his Ellis win, the Dialed In colt won the Arkansas Derby, ran 16th in the Kentucky Derby, then recorded back-to-back fourths in the Texas Derby and Iowa Derby. He earned a 90 Beyer in the Ellis Derby.
Eddie Kenneally and James Graham didn’t win any races Sunday at Ellis Park, and still they had a very good day.
Returning to their home circuit of Kentucky for the biggest day of the summer meet at Ellis in western Kentucky, both Irishmen received hero’s welcomes for winning Grade 1 races less than 24 hours earlier.
DEL MAR, Calif. – With Trevor Denman back in the fold, wouldn’t it be appropriate for the winner of the biggest race at the only track at which he calls to be moving, as Denman is wont to say, like an Express Train?
That will be the hope of trainer John Shirreffs, jockey Juan Hernandez, and owners Lee and Susan Searing on Saturday at Del Mar when their colt Express Train tries to get over the Grade 1 hump in the 31st edition of the $1 million Pacific Classic.
The cancellation of the Saturday night card at Charles Town in West Virginia was due to a decision by jockeys to protest inconsistencies in receiving payments from the track’s bookkeeper, according to officials for the track and the riders.
Jockeys told management that they would refuse to ride the card on Saturday night after being issued checks on Friday with a notification that the checks should be cashed at the casino owned and operated by the track’s parent company due to the possibility of insufficient funds in the track’s normal account, according to the officials.
Wayne Potts, the top trainer at Monmouth Park in New Jersey this year, has appealed a 15-day suspension handed down by the New Jersey Racing Commission after a horse he trains tested over the allowable limit for the regulated anti-inflammatory medication flunixin, Potts said.
The racing week resumes on Thursday at Del Mar with a carryover of $1,645,118 in the 20-cent Rainbow pick six and a mandatory payout looming on Saturday.
Track officials are banking on a massive carryover in the Rainbow pick six on Saturday’s Pacific Classic program to produce record handle at the meeting. This is the first year Del Mar has offered a pick six with a Rainbow format that pays the entire pool on days when there is a single winning ticket. If there are multiple winning tickets, some of the pool is directed into a carryover, which has swelled in recent weeks.
The turf marathoner Neige Blanche has earned her first Grade 1 start of the year this fall after winning Saturday’s $85,500 CTT & TOC Stakes for fillies and mares at Del Mar.
Trainer Leonard Powell said on Sunday that Neige Blanche is scheduled to have her next start in the $300,000 Rodeo Drive Stakes for fillies and mares at 1 1/4 miles on turf at Santa Anita on Oct. 2. The winner receives a fees-paid berth to the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Turf at Del Mar on Nov. 6.
“She’s getting better and better,” Powell said.
