Wrenice, a 2-year-old filly who has won her last four starts by a combined 34 lengths, might start as the shortest-priced favorite Saturday night during the Texas Champions Day program at Sam Houston Race Park.
Entries for the richest card of the meet, which features eight divisional stakes for Texas-breds worth a cumulative $475,000, were taken on Wednesday. First post for the program is 7 p.m. Central.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. - This is a time of transition for trainer Bobby Frankel. Out with the old, like Badge of Silver and Cacique, who have been retired to stud, and in with the new, including Price Tag, who won the Matriarch Stakes last Sunday.
Price Tag was one of several European imports who arrived in recent weeks for Frankel. All were intended for 2007 campaigns, but Frankel called an audible with Price Tag, who was bred and is owned by Prince Khalid Abdullah's Juddmonte Farms.
Daily average handle remained steady this year at Hoosier Park, the Anderson, Ind., track that concluded a 59-day meet on Saturday. Average daily handle from all sources on Hoosier Park races was $1,773,313, an increase of 1.8 percent over the 2005 meet.
Trainer Vickie Foley has been fined $2,000 by Churchill Downs for falsifying the signature of client Gus Goldsmith on two occasions at the Churchill fall meet.
Goldsmith alerted the stewards that Foley had signed his name with her own handwriting on claim slips before back-to-back races Nov. 23 at Churchill. Both claims were voided before the horses moved into Foley's barn.
ETOBICOKE, Ontario - Darwin Banach has had a solid season as the private trainer for Bill Sorokolit Sr. and Bill Sorokolit Jr., sending out 16 winners from 90 starters heading into the last two weeks of the Woodbine meeting.
The undisputed star of Banach's barn has been Sky Conqueror, winner of two Grade 2 stakes and the likely winner of the Sovereign Award as Canada's male turf champion of 2006 at the downtown Toronto ceremony on Dec. 16.
The trainer Dallas Stewart, a native of the New Orleans area, starts his first horse of the new Fair Grounds meet in Thursday's eighth race. That horse, a first-timer in a two-turn turf race, is just another unknown quantity, but in Thursday's featured ninth race, Stewart has the favorite and horse to beat, a promising 3-year-old named Island Warrior.
ETOBICOKE, Ontario - Trainer Sid Attard has posted sensational numbers first time off the claim since the beginning of 2005, winning at a 39 percent clip with a positive return on investment.
Attard has won stakes with several claimed runners, including Seattlespectacular, One for Rose, and Just Rushing, who was taken from Stronach Stable. Attard's latest claim from that outfit, Andalusian, will contest Thursday's Woodbine feature, a 1 1/16-mile allowance for horses who have not won three races.
It was surprising enough when Joe Talamo, all of 16 years old, and just months into his career as a jockey, won the first race of the Fair Grounds meet - a first race that meant something extra, since racing was back in New Orleans for the first time since Hurricane Katrina. But young Talamo apparently intends to keep his name on the tongues of New Orleanians longer than a single day. After the first week of Fair Grounds racing, Talamo sat tied with Donnie Meche atop the jockey standings with six wins - not bad for an 11th-grader.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. - Declan's Moon won the first five starts of his career, the first four of which brought him an Eclipse Award. The first time he lost, he was beaten by a nose. In his last start, he lost by 24 lengths. For a horse known for his repeated excellence, it was obvious something was amiss.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. - Of the eight fillies and mares entered in Thursday's featured seventh race at Hollywood Park, five are exiting the same first-level California-bred allowance race. Considering that the first seven finishers in that Nov. 1 race were separated by a mere two lengths, and four of them are back on Thursday, trips again will be paramount in such an evenly matched field set to go a mile on turf.