Though Sutra had been training over the Polytrack at Keeneland for the last two weeks, her trainer, Michael Stidham, decided to skip last week's Alcibiades at that track and instead pointed her to Saturday's Grade 1, $400,000 at Belmont Park.
Stidham's decision looked ingenious after Sutra rallied up the rail under Mike Luzzi to win the Frizette by 1 3/4 lengths over 47-1 longshot Enchanting Star. It was another 1 3/4 lengths back to Lilly Caron in third.
Todd Pletcher's hand for the $2 million Breeders' Cup Juvenile got significantly stronger on Saturday, when Scat Daddy proved he could stretch out in distance and ran down favored Nobiz Like Shobiz to win the Grade 1, $400,000 by three-quarters of a length at Belmont Park.
Nobiz Like Shobiz, who was pinched back at the start, ran a strong race to be second, a half-length ahead of pacesetting Pegasus Wind. My Golden Opinion finished fourth and was followed in the order of finish by Got the Last Laugh, Xchanger, I'm a Numbers Guy, Buffalo Man, Liquidity, and Big Timer.
The field for Friday night's $250,000 Oklahoma Derby at Remington Park is beginning to take shape, with seven 3-year-olds considered firm for the 1-1/8-mile race, led by recent stakes winners More Than Regal, Sensational Score, and Louisborg. Among a number of possibles is Master of Disaster.
"We're looking for 10 to 12 horses," said Gary Miles, stakes coordinator for Remington.
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. - Todd Pletcher equaled trainer D. Wayne Lukas mark for stakes wins in a season when Master Command scored a front-running victory Friday night in the Grade 2, $499,000 Meadowlands Breeders Cup Stakes.
Pletcher, a former Lukas assistant, tied his mentor with 92 stakes victories. Lukas set the mark in 1987.
"Its a great milestone," Pletcher said. "It was a record I didnt think anyone could get close to."
Pletcher set the single-season earnings record last weekend.
FRESNO, Calif. - Vicarino ($2.40) set a new track record of 1:07.34 for six furlongs as he cruised to an 11-length victory in the $40,750 Harvest Festival Futurity at the Big Fresno Fair on Friday.
The heavily favored 2-year-old colt inherited the lead when Stormy Passion did not break well. It was smooth sailing all the way as he built a 3-length (three one-half) lead at the quarter pole. He was 12 in front at the eighth pole.
Second-choice Scoonerwharfbardog was second, two lengths in front of Preferred Yield.
MIAMI - The final stakes of the 112-day Calder meet will be decided Sunday when 3-year-old fillies go six furlongs in the $45,000 Lady Sonata. The Tropical-at-Calder meeting opens Monday.
The enigmatic Running Lass may be the key to the Lady Sonata. The multiple stakes-winning 3-year-old is coming off one of the poorest performances of her career in the Judy's Red Shoes Stakes, where she finished ninth after racing rankly and striking the inner rail several times after being taken in hand shortly after the start of the 1 1/16-mile turf race.
Racing at Fort Erie Racetrack was canceled for Saturday and Sunday following an early-season snowstorm that began Thursday afternoon. The storm knocked out power in much of the Fort Erie region and it is not expected to be restored until Sunday.
Up to two feet of snow, stirred up by 60-mph winds, was dumped in the area.
Fort Erie's communications director, Daryl Wells Jr., said Fort Erie looked as if a hurricane had passed through.
STICKNEY, Ill. - At Arlington, Wayne Catalano is like the Hall of Fame baseball player Ted Williams, questing for a .400 batting average every summer. This year, running away with another training title there, Catalano hit .365, an awesome number considering the amount of stock his stable sent out. But savvy Hawthorne players take a different approach when Chicago racing action shifts across Chicagoland in late September. So far at this meet, Catalano's .125 batting average, rather than earning him a spot in the Hall of Fame, might get him sent down to the minors.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia - Trainer Terry Jordan is looking forward to spending a few quiet months in Acapulco, Mexico, after he closes shop at Hastings this weekend. The Hastings meet doesn't end until Nov. 26, but Jordan, who owns an apartment in Acapulco, has only two horses left in his barn, and both True Metropolitan and Cuss the Fiddle will be turned out after they run in their respective races Sunday.
ARCADIA, Calif. - Super Frolic, winless in six starts this year including a fifth in the Goodwood Breeders' Cup Handicap at the Oak Tree at Santa Anita meeting on Oct. 7, will make his next start in the $5 million Breeders' Cup Classic at Churchill Downs on Nov. 4, trainer Vladimir Cerin said.
Super Frolic, 6, is owned by Millennium Farms and is scheduled to go to stud at the end of the year. By Pine Bluff, Super Frolic has won 11 of 38 starts and $1,385,614.
