OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Drafted, who began his career in the U.S. but who developed into a multiple group stakes winner in Dubai, is back in the U.S. and will return to the races in Sunday’s Grade 3, $100,000 Fall Highweight Handicap at Aqueduct.
The traditional Thanksgiving Day feature, the Fall Highweight was moved this year to accommodate a NYRA schedule that no longer includes live racing on Thanksgiving Day.
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OZONE PARK, N.Y. – The cancellation of turf racing at Churchill Downs helped in part flood the entry box for Saturday’s Grade 3, $100,000 Long Island Stakes at Aqueduct, with 13 entered for the 1 3/8-mile event, scheduled for the inner turf course. The field will be limited to 12 starters.
Kentucky shippers English Affair, With Dignity, Delta’s Kingdom, and Siberian Iris spice up the final graded turf stakes of the year in New York.
Del Mar officials are projecting significant double-digit growth in all-sources handle for the current autumn meeting, which ends this Sunday.
Through last Sunday, the 11th day of the 15-day season, all-sources total handle showed an increase of 25 percent over the corresponding meeting in 2019, according to track chief financial officer Mike Ernst.
Several weeks of dry weather this month, more racing days this year, simulcasting of Breeders’ Cup races from Keeneland on Nov. 6-7, and an increase in average field size have contributed to the growth.
Storm the Court is the only champion in Saturday’s Grade 1 Hollywood Derby at Del Mar, the lone runner in the field who started in the Kentucky Derby in September, and the only horse among 13 entrants without a win this year.
Storm the Court was sixth, beaten nine lengths, by Authentic in the Kentucky Derby. Prior to that race, Storm the Court was second in the Grade 3 La Jolla Handicap for 3-year-olds on turf at Del Mar in August, his best result in six starts this year, all in stakes.
MIAMI –When talking about the old Calder Race Course, one of the first names that comes to mind is Plesa. That’s both Eddie Plesa Sr., a pioneer and among the first to call the place home when it opened for business 50 years ago, and his son Eddie Jr., among the all-time leading trainers at the track who became a member of the Calder Hall of Fame in 2007.
Brad Cox will have horses spread out all over the country this winter with strings at Turfway Park, Oaklawn, Palm Meadows, and Sam Houston. His Fair Grounds stable often houses some of his very best stock, even if they don’t race in New Orleans, and that is likely to be the case again this winter.
Breeders’ Cup Juvenile winner Essential Quality still is at Churchill Downs and will ship soon enough to Fair Grounds, but Cox said there are no set plans for his next start.
The jockey Francisco Arrieta could teach a master class in persistence.
Arrieta, a 32-year-old Venezuelan native, moved his tack to the United States late in 2014, stopping briefly in South Florida before trying to break into the New York circuit. Instead, the New York circuit nearly broke Arrieta. From 2015 through 2017, Arrieta rode 210 races – mainly in New York, but also at other East Coast tracks – and won three times. Let’s emphasize that – three years, three winners.
The most important aspect of Terrific Temper’s win in a division of the Los Alamitos Two Million Futurity trials on Sunday was not necessarily the victory that gave her a berth in the $1,977,250 final on Dec. 13.
Instead, it was the relief trainer Chris O’Dell felt that the outstanding filly did not bleed in the race.
Terrific Temper bled when she won a division of the Pacific Coast Quarter Horse Racing Association Breeders’ Futurity on Sept. 13, which caused her to be placed on a 14-day veterinarian’s list. She was not entered in the $357,700 final on Oct. 3.
Vertical Threat, the California sprinter who crushed a $200,000 stakes race by more than seven lengths on Monday at Mahoning Valley Race Course, will jump up in class for his next start in the Grade 1 Malibu Stakes on Dec. 26, opening day at Santa Anita.
At least nine riders based at Parx racetrack outside of Philadelphia have tested positive for coronavirus, including the top three jockeys at the track, according to the president of the Jockeys’ Guild, which represents riders nationwide.
The riders who tested positive have all gone into quarantine as Parx puts in place new protocols, according to Terry Meyocks, the Jockeys’ Guild president, who said he had several discussions with Parx officials over the weekend to discuss the positives.
