SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - Coming off a near-track-record performance at Belmont Park last month, Silver Train is expected to bounce when he runs in Sunday's $150,000 Amsterdam Stakes at Saratoga.
The question most handicappers must ask before playing against him is can he bounce and still win the Grade 2 race at six furlongs? It's a question even trainer Richard Dutrow Jr. will be asking.
DEL MAR, Calif. - Andujar, the top older female on dirt this summer in California, is out for the year with a tendon injury, trainer Doug O'Neill said Friday.
O'Neill said the injury was detected after Andujar finished third in the Grade 1 Go for Wand Handicap at Saratoga last Sunday. Thursday, Andujar was shipped to Magali Farms in Santa Ynez, Calif., for four months of rest.
O'Neill said he is optimistic that Andujar, 4, can return to racing in 2006 for owners Paul Reddam and Mark Schlesinger.
DEL MAR, Calif. - Alphabet Kisses will live or die on the front end Sunday at Del Mar, where she tries to stretch her speed two turns in the Grade 2 Clement L. Hirsch Handicap for fillies and mares.
Seven others in the 1 1/16-mile race will try to upset Alphabet Kisses, a one-turn specialist racing outside her comfort zone in the two-turn, $300,000 Hirsch. Trainer Marty Jones notes the challenge.
"At seven-eighths she has been really tough, but when she runs long she hasn't been," he said.
CHICAGO - Who's going to the lead? It's a question every handicapper should ask when starting to study a race, and coming up with the right answer could go a long way toward figuring out the winners of Arlington's co-features on a nine-race Sunday program.
Both the fifth and eighth races are on grass and for fourth-level allowance horses or $80,000 claimers. The fifth is for males over 1 1/8 miles, the eighth for females at 1 1/16 miles.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia - Trainer Dave Forster has an excellent chance of winning the ninth race at Hastings Sunday. After all, he trains three of the six horses that have been entered in the $75,000 optional race at 1 1/16 miles for 3-year-old fillies.
AUBURN, Wash. - The powerhouse barn of trainer Jim Penney and assistant Kay Cooper, which has dominated the handicap division at this meeting, will turn its attention to the 3-year-olds on Sunday when it sends out two promising prospects in the $60,000 Seattle Slew Breeders' Cup Handicap at 1 1/16 miles.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia - Lukin Awesome, who won the B.C. Cup Nursery Stakes last Monday, had to overcame a lot more than the usual assortment of 2-year-old problems in order to make it to the races. Most 2-year-olds have to deal with growing pains, bucked shins, or viruses, but when Lukin Awesome was four months old, he was very lucky to survive an attack by a black bear.
Rubius had to survive a stewards' inquiry before being awarded victory in the $40,000, six-furlong North Randall stakes at Thistledown on Friday.
R and R Express was second, beaten a neck, with 1 1/2 lengths farther back to Pyrite Springs in the field of 10 Ohio-bred 3-year-olds.
Rubius made the lead soon after the start. She drifted out in deep stretch, brushing with R and R Express despite vigorous right-hand whipping by rider Julio Felix. R and R Express chased the winner all the way and was clearly second-best.
