ALBANY, Calif. - Saturday's $50,000 Mill Valley Stakes at Golden Gate Fields attracted a deep field of 2-year-olds, including three stakes winners.
Multiple stakes winners , the likely pacesetter, and Cause to Believe, who will be coming from far off the pace, drew next to each other in the two outside posts in the field of 10 in the six-furlong race. Western Sovereign, who defeated Don Jaun Con in the Harvest Festival Futurity at the Big Fresno Fair, is also entered.
PHOENIX - Beneficial Bartok has spent all her time in Southern California and the vast majority of it chasing some very tough turf fillies and mares. She finds a chance to take the spotlight Saturday in the $40,000 Queen of the Green at Turf Paradise. A 4-year-old filly, Beneficial Bartok heads a field of nine in Saturday's mile turf event.
PORTLAND, Ore. - Is My Friend Dave ready to show his stuff in Saturday's William Kyne Handicap at 1 1/16 miles?
My Friend Dave, a 5-year-old son of Can't Be Slew, built a lofty reputation here last season when he won three straight handicaps before missing by a nose to Demon Warlock in the Portland Meadows Mile. Many figured My Friend Dave would pick right up where he left off last spring, but two starts at the current meet have netted only a pair of distant thirds, in the six-furlong Inaugural Handicap on Oct. 22 and the one-mile Polynesian Flyer Handicap on Nov. 5.
Celestial Legend, heavily favored in each of her last two starts, figures to be a short price again Saturday in the $75,000 Toddler Stakes for 2-year-olds fillies at Laurel Park.
The seven-furlong Toddler is co-featured with the $75,000 H. Steward Mitchell, a race that was thrown wide open with the early scratch of Travelin Leroy, who would have been a prohibitive favorite. The seven-furlong Mitchell has eight 2-year-old colts and geldings.
Caber's Cutie, unbeaten in two starts since adding Lasix, figures to be a heavy favorite in the inaugural running of the $40,000 Sylvia Bishop Memorial at Charles Town.
The seven-furlong race for West Virginia-bred 3-year-old fillies is named for the country's first black female trainer, a longtime regular at Charles Town.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - No one could be blamed for wondering if Saint Liam is lurking somewhere in the shadows of Churchill Downs. Not only did Saint Liam dominate the last two major handicaps at Churchill, but his name runs rampant through the past performances of several key runners who will clash Friday in the highlight of the fall meet, the 131st running of the $500,000 .
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - When a race carries a $500,000 purse - as Friday's Grade 2 Clark Handicap at Churchill Downs does - it is a race that every horseman wants to win. It just happens that trainer Paul McGee, a 43-year-old Louisville native, would like to win it a bit more than the next guy.
Back in 1988, when McGee was 26 and running a two-horse stable, he scored his first major stakes victory in the race with Balthazar B., a horse he had claimed for $18,000 for owners Frank Fletcher and Jim Shields. The victory helped establish McGee's training career.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. - When 2-year-olds Genre and Icy Ridge were purchased this fall in Europe, the idea was to run Friday at Hollywood Park in the Grade 3 Generous, the first of six graded stakes scheduled to make up the three-day, $1.7 million Autumn Turf Festival.
Trainer Mike Puhich said that Icy Ridge was purchased with the Generous in mind, and that he and owners Al and Sandee Kirkwood planned to eventually try him on dirt.
CHICAGO - The owner Frank Calabrese and trainer Wayne Catalano send out Chicago claiming-race winners in waves. But now they have come up with a different sort of horse - the sort of horse that can start a person dreaming.
Lewis Michael is less than six weeks from his 3-year-old birthday, and no doubt, this horse can run. The question going into his 3-year-old season, however, is whether Lewis Michael's best races will be confined to turf, or whether his connections can explore terrain far from the claiming wars, namely the Triple Crown trail.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. - Stellar Jayne will get a second chance to retire on a winning note Friday when she heads an eight-horse field entered in the Grade 2, $150,000 Top Flight Handicap at Aqueduct.
The connections of Stellar Jayne were planning to throw her retirement party last month, after what they hoped was a win in the Breeders' Cup Distaff. But Stellar Jayne's fourth-place finish in that race was unsatisfying for Godolphin Racing, which purchased Stellar Jayne for $3.6 million at auction last November after she finished third in the 2004 BC Distaff.
