NEW ORLEANS - Following Saturday's Louisiana Derby Day, with only two weeks remaining on the Fair Grounds racing schedule, some of the major players will begin heading to their next destination. Emma-Jayne Wilson, 2005 Eclipse winner as North America's best apprentice jockey, leaves Tuesday after riding over the winter here.
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DRF Past Performances
OLDSMAR, Fla. Hemingways Key, third in both the Preakness and Jim Dandy Stakes last year, will try to win his first race in more than a year when he tops a field of eight older horses in Saturdays $65,000 Challenger Stakes at 1 1/16 miles at Tampa Bay Downs.
Hemingways Key, a Notebook colt, will be making his second start of 2007. In his first start of the year, he rallied well along the inside to finish second in a second-level allowance race at Gulfstream Park going seven furlongs.
ARCADIA, Calif. - Air Commander, the winner of an allowance race at 1 1/8 miles here last Sunday, will make his stakes debut in the $250,000 San Felipe Stakes at 1 1/16 miles on March 17, trainer Bob Baffert said on Thursday.
After last weekend's win, Baffert said he would point Air Commander for the $750,000 Santa Anita Derby on April 7, but he has changed his mind and will run Air Commander in the San Felipe next, saying the colt needs more experience in major stakes.
BOYNTON BEACH, Fla. - Halfway through his five-furlong work shortly after dawn on Thursday, as Street Sense approached the quarter pole, the clocker at the Palm Meadows training center proposed a bet to the collection of trainers and railbirds gathered around the viewing stand.
"Over or under 23 for the last quarter mile," was the proposition.
"I'll take the over," said trainer Kiaran McLaughlin. "This isn't Churchill Downs."
ARCADIA, Calif. - Proud Tower Too, the winner of the $2 million Golden Shaheen in Dubai in 2006, is out for at least six months after being found to have a tear in a tendon earlier this week, trainer Sal Gonzalez said.
There is a chance that Proud Tower Too will not return to racing and could be retired to stud if he does not sufficiently recover, Gonzalez said.
The injury was detected after Proud Tower Too returned to training on Sunday following a half-mile workout at Hollywood Park on March 2.
General Charley, a stakes winner on dirt who is now 2 for 3 on turf after his victory in last month's $45,000 Tomball at Sam Houston Race Park, will be considered for the track's Grade 3, $200,000 Connally Breeders' Cup Turf on April 7.
"We're nominating to the Connally and going to take a look at that as a possibility," said Mike Stidham, who trains General Charley.
General Charley won the Tomball by 4 1/2 lengths for his second straight win on turf. In his only other start on grass, he was third.
Through sheer numbers and an aggressive claiming program, trainer Ralph Martinez has dominated the standings at Fairmount Park to such an extent that it has become an annual ritual to concede the trainers' title to him in advance of the meet's opening. With Tuesday's opening day card in the books, let the concession speeches begin.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. - Subscribing to the theory that a first-level allowance race at Gulfstream Park is akin to running in a stakes race anyplace else, trainer Graham Motion opted to forgo such an allowance race at Gulfstream last Saturday to run his 3-year-old Longley in this Saturday's Grade 3, $200,000 Gotham Stakes at Aqueduct.
With only two starts to his credit, Longley will be the least-experienced runner in the expected 10-horse field. But only two members of the field - Summer Doldrums and Wollaston Bay - are stakes winners, and neither has won a graded event.