OZONE PARK, N.Y. - Trainer Bobby Frankel's season in New York will come to an end later this month when his runners head to Florida and California. Before he leaves, Frankel will have several opportunities to add to the 14 stakes he has won in New York this year.
One of his remaining stakes prospects is Arvada, the likely favorite in Saturday's $150,000 at Aqueduct. Arvada is among eight fillies and mares entered in the 1 1/2-mile turf race. Bounding Charm was entered for the main track only.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. - Cloakof Vagueness may be the least accomplished of the nine fillies and mares entered in Saturday's $100,000 Turnback the Alarm Handicap at Aqueduct, but there are some things to like about her in the Grade 3 stakes.
A gray mare, Cloakof Vagueness figures to be double-digit odds in a race that has produced double-digit mutuels in four of the last five years. The pace scenario and distance should be an advantage for Cloakof Vagueness.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. - Artie Schiller, who finished 12th as the favorite in the Breeders' Cup Mile, will make his next start in the Grade 1, $500,000 Hollywood Derby at Hollywood Park on Nov. 28, trainer Jimmy Jerkens said. The Hollywood Derby is run at 1 1/4 miles.
Jerkens said John Velazquez would ride Artie Schiller in that race. Velazquez, the leading rider in the country in purse money won, would replace Richard Migliore, who suffered a broken wrist in gate mishap at Aqueduct on Oct. 28.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. - For the past several months, the main question regarding the upcoming 2005 Gulfstream Park season was whether the newly constructed turf course would be ready for the opening of the meet.
But as the clock ticks down, Magna Entertainment Corporation's main concern - with opening day less than eight weeks away on Jan. 3. - is whether the front side will be ready and operational for the meet, not the one-mile grass course.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. - Kela, the runner-up in the Breeders' Cup Sprint at Lone Star Park last weekend, is likely to make his next start in the $350,000 Cigar Mile at Aqueduct on Nov. 27, trainer Mike Mitchell said.
The winner of two major stakes at Del Mar during the summer, Kela resumed training with a jog at Hollywood Park on Thursday.
"He looked great," Mitchell said. "We just loosened him up."
INGLEWOOD, Calif. - Perfect Moon's erratic form this year has led trainer Doug O'Neill to look for a soft spot for the gelding, and it looks like he has found one in the restricted $60,000 Bien Bien Stakes at Hollywood Park on Saturday.
The race serves as Perfect Moon's turf debut and a chance for his fourth stakes win.
"We just wanted to try and find a spot without the top 3-year-olds," O'Neill said.
That goal has been achieved, and winning may be within reach.
SAN MATEO, Calif. - When a 3-year-old colt shows marked improvement in a race, it usually means one of two things: He has reached a new level or he ran the race of his life and will bounce badly from it.
Trainer Craig Dollase has a colt who fits that description in Hendrix. Dollase will find out Saturday just where his budding star is headed in the Grade 3, $100,000 Bay Meadows Derby.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - In the aftermath of the Breeders' Cup Juvenile, surely many horseplayers are saying to themselves: There have to be some good 2-year-olds somewhere.
Indeed, what unfolded last Saturday in the Juvenile at Lone Star Park was enough to keep racing fans searching for a divisional leader. While the unheralded British invader Wilko prevailed in a major upset, the more highly regarded American horses were a collective disappointment, leaving the issue of 2-year-old supremacy largely unsettled.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Bob Holthus was all grins after sending out back-to-back winners Wednesday at Churchill Downs. Holthus was tickled not just because that's what winning will do to a man, but because even after training racehorses for 52 years, he still sees something new in racing every once in a while.
The Holthus winners were Irena Point, who wore saddlecloth No. 18 in the fifth race, and Big Bad George, who wore No. 15 in the sixth race. Holthus was asked if, in all his years on the racetrack, he had ever saddled Nos. 18 and 15 for consecutive wins.
At the request of the jockey colony at Churchill Downs, the track has reduced its maximum field size from 14 to 12.
"It was a safety issue," jockey Mark Guidry said Thursday. "As a group, we decided that 14 horses was a little much. There have been some riders in some really bad spots with these big fields, so we asked that they bring it back down to 12."
