INGLEWOOD, Calif. - Squallacious has generated a conspicuous buzz at Hollywood Park. Good horses get people talking, even one that has raced only twice.
How good is Squallacious? The answer will come on Sunday in the Grade 2 Hollywood Oaks, a 1 1/16-mile race for 3-year-old fillies that drew a mostly undistinguished field of seven, including Melair Stakes winner She's an Eleven, graded stakes-winning sprinter Bettarun Fast, and Squallacious.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia - There are no stakes at Hastings on Sunday, but the featured race, a 1 1/16-mile allowance that drew nine older horses, attracted an excellent field that includes five graded-stakes winners. The possible favorite, Bull Ranch, isn't a graded-stakes winner, but he did win the 2005 Premiers, which has been reinstated as a Grade 3 this year.
CALGARY, Alberta - Before the April 29 Stampede Park Sprint Championship, the wise guys thought there was too much speed for Smudgeledo to contend with.
The result was a $16.50 win price, as Smudgeledo, a 4-year-old Washington-bred, led every jump of the six furlongs.
The same pundits believed the mile distance of the Teeworth was too far for Smudgledo here May 20, but the gritty gelding once again led throughout and provided his backers with a $24.10 payoff.
ELMONT, N.Y. - The Belmont Stakes signals the end to the Triple Crown and the first half of the season for 3-year-olds. In less than four weeks, the second half of the season will kick off with the running of the $150,000 Dwyer Stakes on July 4.
Strong Contender made a brief impact in the division with a stirring comeback victory in an allowance race at Gulfstream Park in February. He failed to build off that race with a well-beaten third-place finish in the Blue Grass and another third-place finish in the Peter Pan.
ELMONT, N.Y. - When Outperformance finished second to Spider Power in an allowance race here on May 18, trainer Rick Violette felt that his 3-year-old colt might have made the lead too soon. As he watched Friday's Grade 3
unfold, Violette wondered if Outperformance would ever make the lead at all.
Racing in next-to-last position down the backstretch, Outperformance charged down the center of Belmont Park's soft Widener turf course and powered home a 1 1/2-length winner over Spider Power in Friday's Grade 3, $115,400 Hill Prince Stakes before 4,612 at Belmont.
ETOBICOKE, Ontario - Things haven't always gone smoothly for Seductively, sometimes through no fault of her own.
The horse to beat in Sunday's $500,000 Woodbine Oaks, based on her victory in the Grade 3 Selene on May 24, Seductively was quite green in her first two starts at 2, and in her penultimate outing, the Fury Stakes on May 7, she never got untracked after her saddle slipped.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. - Despite two purse increases in 2005, Del Mar is taking a cautious approach to overnight purses for the seven-week meeting that begins on July 19, with a top official expressing concern about a possible decline in business from a record season last year.
Overnight purses at the start of the forthcoming season will be the same as the conclusion of the 2005 meeting, but higher than the start of last year's meeting.
"It may be a conservative approach, but it's the approach [Del Mar] is taking," said Tom Robbins, the director of racing at Del Mar.
SAN MATEO, Calif. - Trainer Daniel Franko has one hope for Muddy Woman in Sunday's Bay Meadows feature.
"I hope she comes back as good as she was," said Franko, who will start the 4-year-old filly for the first time in nearly nine months in a first-level allowance race at one mile on the grass.
last start was a victory at the distance in a $40,000 starter allowance race. Both of her career victories have come on this turf course, where she also has a second and a third in six starts.
Then came the layoff. "She had a shin problem," Franko said.
ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. - Chris Emigh has become the perennial leading rider in Chicago, but when the action moves to the northwest Chicago suburbs, the hierarchy shifts. Emigh has bubbled up to the top at the Hawthorne fall meet and the National Jockey Club spring meet, but has played second or third fiddle in recent Arlington meets to Shaun Bridgmohan, Rene Douglas, and Mark Guidry - basically, whichever "name" rider Arlington super-agent Dennis Cooper lines up for the meet.
