Trainer Tom Amoss went winless with three Fair Grounds starters Sunday – noteworthy for a barn that ended the year smoking.
Before Sunday, Amoss had gone 14-7-2-0 at Fair Grounds since Christmas, a far cry from his stable’s 3-24 mark to start this Fair Grounds season.
“The way I started the meet they were whispering behind my back, it was so bad,” Amoss said. “There are all kind of things that go into turning it around.”
Neither Maxfield nor Mystic Guide, Godolphin homebreds based at Fair Grounds, will make the Pegasus World Cup Invitational later this month, their respective trainers said Sunday.
Both 4-year-old colts are getting over a relatively minor virus that has been circulating at Fair Grounds in recent weeks. Brendan Walsh, who trains Maxfield, said his horse is scheduled to go back to the track Monday, but an interruption in training rules out any chance of making the Pegasus.
ARCADIA, Calif. - A certain Saturday at the start of May was foremost on Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert’s mind Sunday morning, a day after an attractive 1-2 finish by stablemates Life Is Good and Medina Spirit in the Grade 3 Sham Stakes at Santa Anita.
“They’ve got four months to improve,” Baffert said.
ARCADIA, Calif. - Hot Rod Charlie, second in the Breeders' Cup Juvenile in his last start, and Spielberg, who won the Los Alamitos Futurity last month, both worked a half-mile Saturday morning at Santa Anita in preparation for stakes later this meet, perhaps even against one another in the Robert Lewis Stakes later this month.
Both colts were timed in 48 seconds flat.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Although the $3 million Pegasus World Cup Invitational here Jan. 23 lost one of its main attractions with the announcement earlier this week that Tiz the Law has been retired, the race continues to shape up nicely, with many of the handicap division’s major players eyeing the event.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Jockey Jose Ortiz, trainer Chad Brown, and owner Seth Klarman led their respective categories in wins on the New York Racing Association circuit in 2020.
Ortiz won 142 races from 707 mounts in 2020 at NYRA tracks – Aqueduct, Belmont, and Saratoga – finishing five wins in front of Jose Lezcano. Manny Franco (129), Irad Ortiz Jr. (125), and Eric Cancel (108) complete the top five.
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OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Jockeys Trevor McCarthy and Katie Davis are a couple in more ways than one.
McCarthy and Davis were married in December. Both have moved their tack from Maryland to Aqueduct for the winter. Under a New York State Gaming Commission rule, when the two are riding horses in the same race in New York, those horses will be coupled in the wagering. That includes stakes races.
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OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Trainer Horacio DePaz felt he was just starting to make an impact in New York when the COVID-19 pandemic put a halt to racing on this circuit last March.
DePaz finished 2020 in New York with 14 winners from 61 starters, including a victory in the Grade 3 Go for Wand with Sharp Starr.
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ARCADIA, Calif. – Quattroelle won her first stakes in Thursday’s $80,150 Blue Norther Stakes for 2-year-old fillies at Santa Anita. Jockey Tyler Baze and trainer Jeff Mullins believe it should have been her second.
Quattroelle was soundly bumped with a quarter-mile remaining in the Grade 3 Jimmy Durante Stakes on Nov. 28 at Del Mar. Quattroelle recovered to finish a fast-closing third.
“She should have won at Del Mar,” Mullins said Friday. “I don’t know how anyone who saw the race didn’t think she was compromised at the head of the stretch.”
ARCADIA, Calif. – The 6,059th North American career win for Hall of Fame jockey Kent Desormeaux occurred in Thursday’s eighth race at Santa Anita aboard the $18,000 claimer Satchel de Ritches. For the 50-year-old Desormeaux, the win was his first since July 26.
“It felt like the Breeders’ Cup,” a visibly relieved Desormeaux said after Thursday’s races.
Desormeaux’s career and life were in turmoil in the second half of 2020.
