Friday's $40,000 Harvest Festival Futurity will bring a rising star to the Big Fresno Fair.
The six-furlong stakes race for 2-year-olds drew six entrants, headed by Vicarino, an impressive debut winner at Santa Rosa, who lost by a nose to Pacific Heat in a very fast allowance race at Golden Gate Fields two weeks ago.
Hall of Fame jockey Russell Baze, counting down to the day he surpasses Laffit Pincay Jr. on the all-time win list, accompanies Vicarino, who will be making his stakes debut.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - The 12-horse lineup for the $200,000 Perryville Stakes starts with one major contender and ends with another. Remarkably, most of the other horses who will start outside of Likely and inside of High Finance also qualify as viable contenders, making Friday's eighth running of the Perryville the deepest in its brief history.
ELMONT, N.Y. - A pair of optional claiming races for New York-breds highlight Thursday's card at Belmont Park, and a forecast that calls for rain could play a role in the make-up of the fields.
Race 6, a $30,000 optional claimer with second-level allowance conditions, drew a field of 10, and the main speed, Raceland, is on the outside. Raceland is trained by Rick Violette Jr., who is in the midst of a banner fall meet with 9 wins from his first 23 starters.
"I need to keep it up, that's the tough part," said Violette.
Carolina Sky, who dominated the female turf division this meet at Louisiana Downs, could soon see graded stakes action in Kentucky. A winner of her last five starts, she rose from first-level allowance winner to two-time stakes winner in four starts at the meet, with her latest score coming in the $100,000 River Cities Breeders' Cup here Sept. 30.
"So far, she's stepped up every trip," said Morris Nicks, who trains Carolina Sky for David Hutcherson and Dan and Tim Bockmon.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - High Finance drew the outside post as the probable favorite for the Friday feature at Keeneland, the $200,000 Perryville Stakes, for which entries were drawn Tuesday.
Owned by West Point Stable and trained by Rick Violette, High Finance earned a 108 Beyer Speed Figure in winning a second-level allowance on the Aug. 26 Travers undercard at Saratoga.
"We're thrilled with how he ran on Travers Day," said Jeff Lifson, director of Midwest operations for West Point. "Off that big effort, we've got some pretty high ambitions for him."
ARCADIA, Calif. - Two stakes-winning Brazilian-bred fillies - Nakaba and Naughty Rafaela - will play a pivotal role in Thursday's fourth race at the Oak Tree at Santa Anita meeting.
Nakaba and Naughty Rafaela are making their first starts in the United States in a $47,000 allowance race at 1 1/8 miles on turf on Thursday.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - The frigid whispers of approaching winter were supposed to reach the Bluegrass region Wednesday night, meaning the nine-race Thursday card will have a dramatically different feel than what Keeneland fans were fortunate enough to experience during a terrific first few days of the fall meet.
No big deal. Despite temperatures in the mid-40's, the action should still be hot, with big fields and the usual classy brand of racing on tap. Three allowance races are among the offerings, including two in which Hall of Fame trainer Bobby Frankel figures prominently.
