MIAMI - After taking on graded stakes company for most of her career, Splendid Blended will get some much-appreciated class relief when she takes on five rivals in Sunday's $45,000 Marina de Chavon Stakes at Calder.
The Marina de Chavon will share top billing on Sunday's card with the $60,000 GTOBA Debutante Stakes, a 1 1/16-mile turf race for 2-year-old fillies who are progeny of stallions nominated to the Georgia Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association program.
A mare who cost a mere $3,000 12 years ago continues to pay dividends for co-owners Ron Glorioso and Mark Rosen.
Cajun Hottie, a 2-year-old homebred daughter of the bargain buy Hot Little Dish, became a stakes winner Thursday night when she romped to a 5 1/4-length victory over 8-5 favorite Precisely Sue in the 30th running of the $42,900 Blue Mountain Juvenile at Penn National Race Course.
Hot Little Dish, purchased at Fairmount Park in 1994, went on to win 12 of 32 starts and $127,742. Cajun Hottie is her first stakes winner.
SAN MATEO, Calif. Russell Baze rode the rail to his record-setting 9,531st victory Friday aboard Butterfly Belle in the fourth race at Bay Meadows, surpassing Laffit Pincay Jr. to become horse racings all-time winningest rider.
Baze, 48, was well back early in the five-furlong $12,500 claimer on the turf, but he and Butterfly Belle rallied inside to win by 2 1/4 lengths, returning $5.60 as the 9-5 favorite.
NEW ORLEANS - The first barn you come to on the Fair Grounds backstretch sports the blue and white colors of Bryan and Vicki Krantz, who owned the track before Churchill Downs purchased it in 2004. Inside the trainer's office sits Gary Palmisano, a Fair Grounds veteran and trainer who saddled his first winner at the New Orleans oval, We Ade, back in 1974. Palmisano has trained the Krantz horses for 25 years, but hurricane Katrina put him out of business.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. - Proving that even retirement doesn't last forever, John Imbriale was back in the Aqueduct announcer's booth on Friday. Imbriale was scheduled to fill in for Tom Durkin through Sunday, but will return as the winter announcer on Jan. 4 and call Aqueduct's races through March 31.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. - Last July, jockey Aaron Gryder finished the Hollywood Park spring-summer meeting 10th in the standings. It did not meet his expectations, six months after he had relocated his family from the East to his native California.
"I wanted more," he said. "I wasn't happy with my Hollywood Park meeting in the summer. I didn't think things were going the way I thought we could. The bottom line, I had to place it on my shoulders."
SAN MATEO, Calif. - What's not to like - on paper, anyway - about Irresponsible King Sunday at Bay Meadows?
A 4-year-old gelding, Irresponsible King makes his third start in a one-mile maiden race on turf against six rivals.
He has earned Beyers of 80 and 77 in his two starts; none of his rivals has earned a Beyer higher than 75. In his last start Nov. 11, he returned from a 10-month break and finished second by 1 1/4 lengths to his entrymate, and 5 1/2 lengths in front of the third-place finisher.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. - The recent retirements of the Grade 1 winners Healthy Addiction, Hollywood Story, and Star Parade have left a glaring gap at the top of the filly and mare dirt division in California.
Any of those fillies would be an odds-on favorite in Sunday's $150,000 Bayakoa Handicap at Hollywood Park. None of the 14 fillies and mares entered in the Grade 2 race over 1 1/16 miles has won a graded stakes on dirt in the United States this year.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. - Trainer John Terranova hopes to carry his recent hot streak from Aqueduct's main track to the inner track when he sends out Twistaway in Sunday's $65,000 East View Stakes for New York-bred juvenile fillies.
Terranova went 5 for 16 during Aqueduct's main-track meet. His first runner on the inner track, Makin Me Famous, finished second in a maiden race on Thursday at odds of 15-1.
