LOUISVILLE, Ky. - So this is what a cool $121 million can get you these days.
Finally, thankfully, and mercifully, the renovation of Churchill Downs is complete. After 3 1/2 years of being torn down and rebuilt, a sparkling new facility will await racing fans when Churchill opens Saturday for its 2005 spring meet.
Quite predictably, the excitement has been palpable throughout the Churchill frontside and backside as opening day has neared.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Gary Stevens, the Hall of Fame jockey who has been riding regularly at the Keeneland spring meet, said Thursday he has put his Southern California home up for sale and intends to make Kentucky the primary focus of his annual circuit, including the Churchill Downs spring meet that starts Saturday.
Stevens initially had intended to ride at Belmont Park following the Kentucky Derby but said he and his wife, Angie, have "fallen in love" with Kentucky and are looking to move here.
NGLEWOOD, Calif. - Hall of Fame trainer Neil Drysdale has 64 stakes wins at Hollywood Park, but none has come in the Inglewood Handicap.
In a way, that does not seem right. Drysdale's stable specializes in turf horses, and the Grade 3 Inglewood is run at 1 1/16 miles on turf.
The lack of an Inglewood winner on Drysdale's roll of achievements could change on Saturday, when he starts in the $100,000 race.
Both are capable of winning the Inglewood, which drew eight entrants.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. - Mister Acpen returns from a 16-month layoff to start in Saturday's $100,000 Inglewood Handicap at Hollywood Park, a break in which he was nearly euthanized and was exiled to Holland for a year before returning to the United States earlier this year.
The ordeal took many twists and turns along the way, testing the patience and dedication of co-owner and prominent lawyer Neil Papiano and his trainer, Kristin Mulhall. When Mister Acpen starts on Saturday, the crisis will be well behind him, but it remains fresh on Mulhall's mind.
Trainer Bill Mott and jockey Jerry Bailey are usually long gone from south Florida by the first of May. But the two Hall of Famers will team at Calder on Saturday as the likely favorites in both the $150,000 Hollywood Wildcat Breeders' Cup Handicap and the $75,000 Carterista Handicap, two of four stakes on the 12-race program that begins at 12:50 p.m.
There will be only five starters in Saturday's $75,000 Ponche Handicap at Calder, but picking a winner may still be no easy task in the six-furlong sprint.
The Ponche and the $100,000 Unbridled Stakes for 3-year-olds help fill out the special all-stakes pick four wager that also includes the Hollywood Wildcat and Carterista handicaps.
GRAND PRAIRIE, Texas - Back in 2001, trainer Bill Morey called it the Texas two-step when he pulled a Texas Mile-Lone Star Park Handicap double with Dixie Dot Com. Supah Blitz could be going down that road this year. Saturday, he will go favored in the first half of the dance, the Grade 3, $300,000 at Lone Star Park.
The race is one of two major dirt stakes at the meet for older horses, the other being the Grade 3, $300,000 Lone Star Park Handicap on May 30.
GRAND PRAIRIE, Texas - Charming Kid has some qualities that suggest he could develop into a nice horse, and he will get his first chance to prove it Saturday when he makes his stakes debut in the $75,000 Grand Prairie Turf Challenge at Lone Star Park.
The one-mile turf race for 3-year-olds is one of three undercard stakes supporting the Grade 3, $300,000 Texas Mile. Purses for the four stakes total $625,000, making Texas Mile Day one of the richest programs of the meet at Lone Star.
After whetting his appetite by winning with a high percentage of selected shippers last season, trainer Todd Pletcher is digging in for a full feast of slots-enriched purses at Delaware Park.
Fresh from dominating the trainer standings at the recently concluded Gulfstream Park meet, Pletcher will have a large group of horses stabled at Delaware for the first time.
CHICAGO - Milwaukee Avenue starts just beyond the North Loop in downtown Chicago and runs northwest until it hits countryside - which makes the Milwaukee Avenue Handicap a perfect metaphor for the Illinois Day program at Hawthorne on Saturday.
No racetrack in the country could claim more urban grit than Hawthorne, but its Saturday card ripples out to even the rural fringes of the state, where most of the 55 horses entered in Saturday's stakes were bred and raised.
