INGLEWOOD, Calif. - With Breeders' Cup Juvenile hero Stevie Wonderboy assured of the title as champion 2-year-old male, Saturday's Grade 1 has been reduced from the race that decided the 2004 championship to a preview of California's promising colts for 2006.
Judging from the field gathered for the $401,250 Futurity, there will be plenty of candidates capable of challenging Stevie Wonderboy at Santa Anita in coming months.
MIAMI - Meteor Storm has traveled across the country and into Canada to face the elite of the turf division all year. Along the way he has amassed more than $600,000 in earnings yet does not have a single victory to show for all his hard work and remarkably consistent form. That problem should be solved Saturday when Meteor Storm closes out his 2005 campaign in Calder's $200,000 .
The Furl Sail Handicap is bursting with horses, but toeholds for handicappers are much more difficult to find.
Fourteen were entered in the $75,000 Furl Sail, a one-mile grass race Saturday at the Fair Grounds meet at Louisiana Downs, and in a race where the favorite is difficult to find, picking a winner is going to be a major challenge.
"People don't realize that so much of the time in turf races, it all comes down to who gets the trip," said trainer Steve Flint.
ALBANY, Calif. - Saturday's feature race at Golden Gate Fields could come down to a question of
condition as seven runners compete in a $50,000 optional claimer at 1 1/16 miles.
Three have not raced since October, and two others have had only one race off layoffs.
Wasserman, who just ran second in a sprint against similar, might offer the best value.
Stakes-placed in an Emerald Downs sprint before coming here, Wasserman has yet to win at two turns but has shown an ability to get a distance.
PORTLAND, Ore. - Five stakes worth a total of $80,000 highlight Saturday's 13th Oregon Championship Day program at Portland Meadows.
All nine races on the card are restricted to Oregon-breds, and a total of 72 horses have been entered.
The $40,000 Os West Oregon Futurity for 3-year-olds at a mile goes as the featured eighth race. Tom Two figures as a strong favorite over nine challengers after winning the Bill Wineberg and the Columbia River in his last two starts.
MIAMI - Film Maker has finished third and second against the best female turf horses in the world in the last two renewals of the Breeders' Cup Filly and Mare Turf. She is also a Grade 1 winner of more than $1.2 million and without doubt the class of the field for Calder's $200,000 La Prevoyante Handicap.
One thing Film Maker hasn't done during her remarkable career, though, is try to stay the 1 1/2-mile distance of the Grade 2 La Prevoyante. That is perhaps the one factor that may
MIAMI - Trainer Manny Tortora has been trying to separate his dynamic duo of Whos Crying Now and Supervisor since the end of summer. But barring a rainstorm that would take the W.L. McKnight Handicap off the grass, Whos Crying Now and Supervisor will team up again as major players in Saturday's Grade 3 Fred W. Hooper Handicap at Calder.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. - has the class and the speed to be the controlling factor Saturday in the $75,000 added Ladies Handicap at Aqueduct.
In the end, stamina will decide the 1 1/4-mile race over the inner track.
The Ladies Handicap, the oldest stakes on the New York calendar for fillies and mares, tops a 10-race card that gets under way at 12:10 p.m.
The Ladies Handicap drew 10 runners for its 135th running, and most trainers will be hoping for the best at the 10-furlong distance.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. - Randy Schulhofer, who took over head training duties when his dad, the Hall of Fame trainer Scotty Schulhofer, retired at the end of 2001, is leaving Thoroughbred racing to enter the corporate world. Schulhofer's last official day as a trainer was to have been Friday when he was to have run two horses at Aqueduct.
"Since I had kids my priorities have changed," said Schulhofer, a 44-year-old father of two. "I got an opportunity to have a five-day-a-week job, benefits, heath care, weekends, holidays, more time to spend with family, and I'm doing it."
Not many horses can win two derbies and still fly as low on the racing radar as Brass Hat has.
"He really hasn't gotten much notoriety at all," said William "Buff" Bradley, who trains Brass Hat for his father, Fred Bradley. "But what he's done is still a big deal to us, and that's the main thing."
