OZONE PARK, N.Y. - It was not trainer Gregory Wilson's plan to give Sea Pines 50 days between races. It's just that he could not find the right race for his 3-year-old filly, who has won two of her first four starts.
He may have found the perfect spot for Sea Pines to earn her first stakes win when she meets five rivals in Sunday's $65,000 Busanda Stakes at Aqueduct.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. - Owner Eugene Melnyk and trainer Todd Pletcher have a likely force in the filly and mare division with Indian Vale. They could have another budding star as well with Pool Land, who makes her stakes debut in Sunday's $60,000 Summer Colony at Aqueduct.
Pool Land, a 4-year-old daughter of Silver Deputy, has won her first two starts by more than five lengths each. After winning a 6 1/2-furlong maiden race over Aqueduct's main track on Nov. 26, she successfully stretched out to a mile and 70 yards winning an allowance race on Dec. 18 over the inner track.
BOSSIER CITY, La. - Only six horses were entered in the $75,000 Bedanken Stakes, but the one-mile grass race, Sunday's main event at the Fair Grounds meet at Louisiana Downs, lured three horses from Florida - two from trainer Richard Dutrow Jr. and another from the barn of Todd Pletcher. Christmas Stocking, one of the Dutrows, won a stakes in her last start, and Pletcher's contribution, Dyna's Destiny, was stakes-placed at Keeneland last fall.
BOSSIER CITY, La. - It is not all that easy to fly a horse into Louisiana Downs - unless you're willing to pay for it. And the connections of the good California turf horse Chinese Dragon have found reason to ante up the cash to fly here for next weekend's Grade 3 Fair Grounds Breeders' Cup Handicap.
Oaklawn Park and the Arkansas Racing Commission are working together to increase backstretch security for the track's meet that will open on Friday. There are plans to use a surveillance system with wireless cameras; incorporate random, prerace blood testing on horses; and assign an independent monitor to the stable area. The state's existing rules provide for the measures, according to an official with the racing commission.
In response to complaints from customers and horsemen, Gulfstream Park announced Friday that admission to both rooms on the first floor of the clubhouse, which had been $10 since the meet opened on Jan. 4, would be free to the public through the rest of January. The new policy was to become effective on Saturday.
Before a press gathering last weekend, Frank Stronach, chairman of the track's owner, Magna Entertainment Corp., had said, "As things unfold we'll listen to complaints or wishes and we'll adjust to them."
PORTLAND, Ore. - Rbeei and Wine at Dawn will drop out of the stakes ranks to contest Sunday's Portland Meadows feature, a six-furlong allowance for fillies and mares that has drawn a field of five.
Rbeei, a 4-year-old, finished second to Wine at Dawn's fourth in the one-mile City of Roses Handicap here on Dec. 10. The 5-year-old Wine at Dawn then turned the tables on Rbeei in last Sunday's 1 1/16-mile Solda Holme Invitational Handicap, finishing third to her rival's sixth.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. - Racing featuring 3-year-olds will again take center stage at Gulfstream Park on Sunday with a pair of first-level allowance races highlighting a 10-race program.
As will likely be the case for much of the meet, trainer Todd Pletcher will hold the upper hand in both events, each of which carries a $33,000 purse.
Pletcher will send out Sunriver, a full brother to his champion filly Ashado, in the seventh race, which drew a field of nine going 1 1/8 miles.
Phase two of the Evangeline Downs winter meeting will begin Thursday and continue through March 25. Those dates had tentatively been scheduled to return to Delta Downs, but reconstruction of Delta's barn area, extensively damaged by Hurricane Rita in late September, is not finished. The work is expected to be completed in time for the beginning of Delta's scheduled Quarter Horse meeting April 13.
