Eddie Kenneally and James Graham didn’t win any races Sunday at Ellis Park, and still they had a very good day.
Returning to their home circuit of Kentucky for the biggest day of the summer meet at Ellis in western Kentucky, both Irishmen received hero’s welcomes for winning Grade 1 races less than 24 hours earlier.
DEL MAR, Calif. – With Trevor Denman back in the fold, wouldn’t it be appropriate for the winner of the biggest race at the only track at which he calls to be moving, as Denman is wont to say, like an Express Train?
That will be the hope of trainer John Shirreffs, jockey Juan Hernandez, and owners Lee and Susan Searing on Saturday at Del Mar when their colt Express Train tries to get over the Grade 1 hump in the 31st edition of the $1 million Pacific Classic.
The cancellation of the Saturday night card at Charles Town in West Virginia was due to a decision by jockeys to protest inconsistencies in receiving payments from the track’s bookkeeper, according to officials for the track and the riders.
Jockeys told management that they would refuse to ride the card on Saturday night after being issued checks on Friday with a notification that the checks should be cashed at the casino owned and operated by the track’s parent company due to the possibility of insufficient funds in the track’s normal account, according to the officials.
Wayne Potts, the top trainer at Monmouth Park in New Jersey this year, has appealed a 15-day suspension handed down by the New Jersey Racing Commission after a horse he trains tested over the allowable limit for the regulated anti-inflammatory medication flunixin, Potts said.
The racing week resumes on Thursday at Del Mar with a carryover of $1,645,118 in the 20-cent Rainbow pick six and a mandatory payout looming on Saturday.
Track officials are banking on a massive carryover in the Rainbow pick six on Saturday’s Pacific Classic program to produce record handle at the meeting. This is the first year Del Mar has offered a pick six with a Rainbow format that pays the entire pool on days when there is a single winning ticket. If there are multiple winning tickets, some of the pool is directed into a carryover, which has swelled in recent weeks.
The turf marathoner Neige Blanche has earned her first Grade 1 start of the year this fall after winning Saturday’s $85,500 CTT & TOC Stakes for fillies and mares at Del Mar.
Trainer Leonard Powell said on Sunday that Neige Blanche is scheduled to have her next start in the $300,000 Rodeo Drive Stakes for fillies and mares at 1 1/4 miles on turf at Santa Anita on Oct. 2. The winner receives a fees-paid berth to the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Turf at Del Mar on Nov. 6.
“She’s getting better and better,” Powell said.
Trainer Phil D’Amato has won six of the last seven runnings of the Grade 2 Del Mar Handicap, starting one horse each of the last two years and three in 2018.
Saturday, D’Amato has a more aggressive approach in mind for the leading distance turf race of the track’s summer meeting. As of Monday, D’Amato planned to have three runners – Acclimate, Red King, and Say the Word – and perhaps as many as five with Ready Soul and Red Storm Risen under strong consideration.
“All options are open,” he said.
Trainer Dallas Stewart, never bashful to take a shot in a big race, will send out Will’s Secret against Malathaat and Maracuja in Saturday’s Grade 1, $600,000 Alabama Stakes at Saratoga.
Will’s Secret’s solid 3-year-old form went off kilter in last month’s Grade 3 Indiana Oaks where she finished a well-beaten sixth. Stewart believes there was a legitimate excuse for her poor performance.
DEL MAR, Calif. – For more than a year, trainer Richard Mandella had been trying to beat Cigar, going across the country and around the world in that futile quest, from Oaklawn Park to Hollywood Park, to Belmont Park and finally Nad al Sheba. He had found him, as Tom Durkin famously said in the 1995 Breeders’ Cup Classic, to be “unconquerable, unbeatable, invincible.”
Seven jockeys have received suspensions for careless riding since the Del Mar season began on July 16.
Most are likely to serve the days in the autumn.
Court action has enabled a majority of the affected jockeys to ride without disruption. Through Sunday, the 18th day of the 31-day season, seven riders had been suspended for riding infractions, but only one – Drayden Van Dyke – has accepted the penalty.
