CHICAGO - Watching races at Hawthorne this week, with a parade of longshots coming in, one wonders how much to apply logic during the handicapping process, and how much some other art.
Voodoo? Numerology? Animal sacrifice?
Don't try the latter at home, kids, but still, it would be wonderful to somehow, some way throw some order over the ongoing events at this meet.
Just Add Water's weight assignment points him out as the one to beat Saturday in the $20,000 Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Handicap at The Woodlands in Kansas City, Kan. He is the 123-pound highweight for the six-furlong race, and will carry three more pounds than his closest rivals.
The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe is one of three stakes on the card. The others are for Quarter Horses, including the Grade 2, $97,464 Kansas Futurity.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia - Two well-timed rides resulted in desperate wins in both the Jack and Sadie Diamond futurities at Hastings last weekend.
In the Jack Diamond Futurity, for colts and geldings, Jorge Espitia brought longshot Sungold Wonder ($72.90) from well back to beat a game Lukin Awesome by a head. On Saturday in the Sadie Diamond, the 1-2 favorite, No Ka Oi, held on to win by a nose over Starlite Strike.
AUBURN, Wash. - A field of eight evenly matched 3-year-old fillies, including four recent winners, will pose a stern test for handicappers in Saturday's Emerald Downs feature. All eight entrants in the six-furlong feature will race for a claiming tag of $15,000.
There's nothing in the chart footnotes that indicates Master of Disaster encountered any kind of trouble in the Grade 2 Futurity at Belmont Park on Sept. 17. It merely appears he flashed speed and tired badly after the first half-mile.
According to trainer Steve Klesaris, however, deserves a pass for the worst performance of his three-race career.
Klesaris, confident the Futurity was not an accurate reflection of his 2-year-old colt's abilities, is bringing Master of Disaster back to Delaware Park for Saturday's $100,000 Dover Stakes.
, unbeaten in four starts this season since returning from a 13-month layoff, will face stakes company for the first time in the $50,000 Pistol Packer Handicap, a 1 1/16-mile race for Pennsylvania-bred fillies and mares at Philadelphia Park.
Unraced until June of her 3-year-old season, Immune to Gloom was claimed out of her career debut for $40,000 in June 2004. She didn't make her first start for new trainer Tim Ritchey until July 2005, when she defeated maiden special weight company in a sprint.
EAST BOSTON, Mass. - The yearly tradition of scraping together cash from the Massachusetts breeders' fund has yielded four newly created stakes to fill out the schedule at Suffolk Downs, starting with the $40,000 Louise Kimball for 3-year-old fillies Saturday.
Annually, the statebred program budgets a certain amount of money to go to breeders and owners of Massachusetts-bred horses that win in open company. Often, there are funds left over, and the surplus is used to create new stakes for Massachusetts-breds late in the season.
FORT ERIE, Ontario - Fort Erie leading trainer Nick Gonzalez has applied for 25 stalls for the winter meet at Tampa Bay Downs.
Rarely has Gonzalez competed down south during the Canadian off-season. If he gets his stalls, Gonzalez will fill them with runners from the Frank Stronach organization.
"We're thrilled with [Gonzalez] He's done great for us," said Mike Rogers, business manager of the racing operations of Stronach Stable. "He's got the kind of operation we like.
