If you happened to catch the first few weeks of the Lone Star Park meet this past spring, you probably noticed that trainer Cody Autrey seemed to be winning, oh, 12 or 14 races a day. Now, it's happening at Fair Grounds.
With four wins in three racing days last week, Autrey brought his meet win total to 11, for a one-win lead over Tom Amoss in the trainer standings heading into this week's races.
Stormy Amber, who had a three-race win streak snapped in her last start, looks set to return to her winning ways in the Prime Rewards, one of two $40,000 stakes at a mile to be run Friday at Delta Downs. The Prime Rewards (race 8) is for fillies and mares who have not won a stakes, and the Lookout (race 6) is for 3-year-olds and up with the same restriction.
MIAMI - Calder Race Course accepted entries on Wednesday for Saturday's Grand Slam III card from horses stabled at Payson Park in the hope that the quarantine of the training facility will be lifted before the weekend.
Payson Park was quarantined on Saturday after a horse trained by John Hennig died Friday from an illness symptomatic of equine herpesvirus. The results of an autopsy being performed at the University of Kentucky were not available as of Wednesday. Calder had not accepted entries from Payson horses since Saturday.
Trainer Chris Block doesn't have a single horse entered in the nine races on Hawthorne's Friday racing program, but Block's fingerprints are all over the featured eighth race, an entry-level route allowance restricted to Illinois-breds.
Block and his family, who race their stock as Team Block, had an excellent 2006 season, with even more to look forward to next year. But they breed their own horses - occasionally buying a yearling prospect - with an eye toward allowance and stakes races. The fillies, if they're good enough, might be retired as broodmares.
ARCADIA, Calif. - In a widely respected career of 4,199 victories at the top of the game through Tuesday's racing, Richard Migliore will remember his 4,199th as one of the sweetest.
The nuts and bolts were nothing extraordinary - a Grade 3 stakes event for 3-year-olds at a mile on the turf, named for one of the more obscure big-race winners out West - but the setting and the circumstances were enough to send chills of excitement through Migliore's 42-year-old bones.
ARCADIA, Calif. - The older horses El Roblar, Lucky J.H., Surf Cat, and Wilko have been largely forgotten in recent months. Each of them won important races earlier in their careers, but layoffs from injuries - in the case of El Roblar, Lucky J.H., and Surf Cat - and a bout with colic for Wilko have kept them out of the spotlight recently.
But during the Santa Anita winter-spring meeting, they could reemerge as horses to follow in a handicap division led by the dominant Lava Man.
MIAMI - Nick Zito is well known for numerous outstanding accomplishments during his training career, which ultimately resulted in his election two years ago into the Racing Hall of Fame. But until this past month, Zito was never known as the King of Calder.
Zito has become a dominant factor during the final month of the Tropical at Calder session. He has sent out eight winners from just 23 starters at the meet, and the majority of those victories have come with young, lightly raced juveniles gearing up for their 3-year-old campaigns this winter at Gulfstream Park.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. - The New York-bred Ferocious Fires will look to complete a well-managed and undefeated 3-year-old campaign on Friday when he heads a seven-horse field entered in a $48,000 third-level allowance race at Aqueduct.
The six-furlong race also carries an optional claiming tag of $75,000 for which three of the horses are eligible, including the gritty Spooky Mulder.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. - Fearful of being unable to ship horses out of Florida because of the recent outbreak of equine herpesvirus in several parts of the state, trainer Kiaran McLaughlin has sent probable Horse of the Year Invasor and Belmont Stakes winner Jazil back to New York.
Invasor and Jazil arrived at McLaughlin's barn at Belmont Park on Sunday and will train in New York for now, McLaughlin said Wednesday from his barn at the Palm Meadows training center in Florida. Of the nine reported cases of equine herpesvirus in Florida, none has come from horses stabled at Palm Meadows.
Far too many food analogies get drawn in New Orleans, where a love for the local cuisine is rivaled by a love of rhapsodizing over the local cuisine. And it would be easy to point out what a savory gumbo of a racing program Fair Grounds has cooked up for Friday: Two divisions of the Louisiana Futurity - one for fillies, the other for colts and geldings; a third-level turf allowance with potential stakes horses in it; and an entry-level two-turn allowance race for 2-year-old fillies thrown in for seasoning.
