AUBURN, Wash. - Trainer Jim Penney said he might nominate as many as five horses for the Aug. 21 running of the Grade 3, $250,000 Longacres Mile - a race he has won a record four times in the past. But he also indicated he is likely to start only one of them in the Mile.
That would be Flamethrowintexan, who earned his berth with a 2 1/4-length victory against two-time defending champion Poker Brad in Sunday's $100,000 Mt. Rainier Breeders' Cup Handicap at 1 1/8 miles.
DEL MAR, Calif. - Sarafan has started at 20 racetracks in seven countries in his 47-race career, but none of those courses has meant as much to his career as Del Mar.
In six starts at Del Mar, Sarafan has won four times, with all the victories in stakes. Last year, he ran at this meeting three times, winning the Escondido Handicap and finishing second in the Grade 2 Del Mar Handicap.
DEL MAR, Calif. - Pico Central, last in Sunday's $300,000 , was found to have bled from the lungs in a postrace examination and might have run his last race, trainer Paulo Lobo said Monday.
Pico Central was never a factor in the Grade 1 Crosby Handicap as the 5-2 favorite. He finished last of nine, 12 lengths behind the winner, Greg's Gold.
"There was a lot of blood in the throat and trachea," Lobo said.
Scheduled to go to stud at Padua Stables in Florida in 2006, Pico Central has won 9 of 17 starts and $1,283,145.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - A determined Artie Schiller needed nearly every inch of the stretch to wear down Silver Tree to win Monday's Grade 2, $147,000 at Saratoga before a crowd of 14,398.
Artie Schiller won the Baruch by a half-length. Silver Tree finished second, 6 1/2 lengths in front of America Live in the five-horse field on turf. The order of finish was completed by Del Mar Show and Seeking Answers. Not Phone, Golden Commander, and Willard Straight were scratched.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - Galloping Grocer, an impressive maiden winner at Saratoga last year, returns to the races in Wednesday's $250,000 Cab Calloway Stakes.
, who hasn't run since finishing 13th in the Preakness, is the likely favorite among seven 3-year-olds entered in the Cab Calloway, a race restricted to the progeny of New York stallions.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - Ashado munched on peppermints Monday, a day after winning her seventh Grade 1 in the at Saratoga, and her trainer, Todd Pletcher, looked ahead to his next move with the leader of the filly and mare division.
In the winner's circle following Ashado's 9 1/2-length win in the Go for Wand, Pletcher said he would target the Ruffian on Sept. 11 and the Beldame on Oct. 1, before running Ashado in the Breeders' Cup Distaff on Oct. 29 at Belmont Park. Ashado, last year's champion 3-year-old filly, won the Breeders' Cup last year.
OCEANPORT, N.J. - Trainer Bruce Headley sends his regrets, but not Surf Cat, for the $1 million Haskell Invitational on Sunday at Monmouth Park.
"I'm very sorry that we can't make it," Headley said. "I appreciate the invitation and really wish that we could come."
Headley said the shipping arrangements from California became too complicated.
CHICAGO - Perfect Drift so thoroughly outclassed the other horses in Saturday's Washington Park Handicap that even after checking and losing all his momentum just more than a quarter-mile from the finish, he still won by more than four lengths while going away at the wire. Perfect Drift ended a long losing streak on dirt while setting a track record for 1 3/16 miles, and earned a return trip to the $1 million Pacific Classic Aug. 21 at Del Mar, his trainer Murray Johnson said.
SANTA ROSA, Calif. - Halfway through the Sonoma County Fair meet, the new turf course has proven a hit with trainers, jockeys, and bettors.
The seven-eighth-mile track is lush and green. It is so quiet that you can barely hear the horses on it as they run down the stretch in front of the grandstand. It has played fairly, with horses winning on the front end, from a stalking position, and from off the pace, from the inside and the outside.
