Brass Hat likely will make his next start in the $6 million Dubai World Cup on March 25, trainer Buff Bradley said this week from Turfway Park in Florence, Ky.
"We got invited Monday," said Bradley. "Assuming everything goes okay between now and then, we're planning on going."
A horse from the Dallas Stewart stable has been the dominant force in recent months in the filly-mare division at Turfway Park. And when the $50,000 Likely Exchange Stakes is run Saturday at the Florence, Ky., track, Stewart could once again have a prominent role in the outcome.
OLDSMAR, Fla. - Powerful Touch, fresh from a seven-length optional claiming victory at Gulfstream Park, and Sir Shackleton, making his first start since the Breeders' Cup Classic, should vie for favoritism in Saturday's $50,000 Super Stakes at Tampa Bay Downs.
Jose Lezcano, the meet's leading rider, is named on the Bobby Frankel-trained Powerful Touch at 122 pounds. Powerful Touch and Sir Shackleton were both supplemented to the stakes at a cost of $1,500.
Unbeaten 3-year-old filly Celestial Legend, racing beyond seven furlongs for the first time, will be challenged by impressive maiden winner For Kisses in Saturday's $75,000 Wide Country Stakes at Laurel Park.
The one-turn, one-mile race drew a field of nine 3-year-old fillies.
Aside from her career debut at Delaware Park, where she got up by a nose at 17-1, hasn't had a close call in five races, three of them stakes.
Two horses new to Sunland Park appear in position to control Saturday's $50,000 El Paso Times Handicap. A 6 1/2-furlong race for 3-year-old fillies, the El Paso Times has attracted a field of seven, with invaders Shimmering Sunset and Great Actress likely to vie for favoritism.
The leading contenders in the $40,000 Tomball, a 1 1/16-mile turf race for Texas-bred fillies and mares at Sam Houston Race Park, are at different points in their careers. Marfa's Taxes, the 9-year-old who could be the favorite, is the senior member of the field. Millibar is the baby, with 2 wins in 3 career starts. And stakes winner Claudia's Agenda fits somewhere in between, with 5 wins in 20 starts and earnings of $78,015.
Missy Can Do returns to defend her title in the $10,000 Bold Accent Stakes, facing eight others in the half-mile dash around the far turn of Fonner's five-eighth-mile oval.
lowered the stakes record in her Bold Accent win last year. She was timed in 44.40 seconds over a track rated fast that had become even faster with moisture and heavy fog in the air.
Hall of Fame owner, breeder, and trainer Walter Merrick, of Sayre, Okla., died on Feb. 4. He was 94.
Merrick, who had been influential in Quarter Horse racing since the 1930's, bred, owned, and trained 1969 world champion Easy Jet, a winner of 27 of 38 starts who went on to become the all-time leading sire by money earned by offspring ($26,237,832) before being passed by Dash for Cash, First Down Dash, and Chicks Beduino.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. - Mona Rose has started 22 times, 21 of them in races at Woodbine. The only time the veteran turf mare ventured south of the border was the summer of 2004, when she finished off the board in Saratoga's Grade 3 Ballston Spa Breeders' Cup Handicap.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. - Harlington, a Kentucky Derby prospect until being sidelined by an ankle injury last winter, continued his comeback with a victory in Wednesday's $37,000 allowance feature at Gulfstream Park.
The win was the second in a row for Harlington since he returned to action in early December, his fourth victory in five starts overall, and likely earned him a spot in the Grade 2 Gulfstream Park Handicap on March 4.
