Last Answer ($32.10) circled into contention on the far turn and held off a closing Rainbows for Luck in the stretch to capture the $108,000 Chief Bearhart Stakes at Woodbine.
Jono Jones rated Last Answer about five lengths off the early pace in the 1 1/4-mile event, as Sky Diamond and My Pal Lana dueled through honest fractions over a course labeled yielding.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. - The pressure is already on John Servis, the trainer of the undefeated Rockport Harbor, who will make his stakes debut in Tuesday's $100,000-added Nashua Stakes for 2-year-olds at Aqueduct.
Servis trained this year's Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner, Smarty Jones, who is now retired. At this time last year, Smarty Jones was an unknown, but Rockport Harbor is already getting some press in his hometown of Philadelphia because of his connections.
Azoom won his seventh race of the Sam Houston Race Park meet when he captured the $1 million Texas Classic Futurity for Quarter Horses by 1 3/4 lengths over Bigtime Favorite. The win was his third futurity score of the meet, following the $283,422 Texas Quarter Horse Association Futurity and the $350,000 Sam Houston Futurity.
Azoom ($2.60) led throughout the 400-yard race, covering the distance in 19.85 seconds. Rodrigo Vallejo rode the winner for Enrique Carron and trainer Frank Cavazos. Azoom earned $432,769 for winning the Grade 1 Texas Classic Futurity.
GRAND PRAIRIE, Texas - Lone Star Park had handled more than $7.6 million from all sources by 8 p.m. on Friday, crushing its previous record of $7.2 million with three more hours of incoming simulcasts being offered to patrons. The track also set a live handle record on Friday, one day before it was to host the Breeders' Cup World Thoroughbred Championships.
Handle on the 11-race card was $6,365,758, topping the mark of $6,076,969 the track set on May 28, 2001, during a program of stakes called Lone Star Million Day.
Yearly Report set a track record at Lone Star Park on Friday when she stormed to a 9 1/4-length victory in the $150,000 Stonerside, covering seven furlongs in a blazing 1:20.67. The race, for 3-year-old fillies, was one of three stakes on the card as part of Lone Star's build-up to the Breeders' Cup. Attendance for the program was 25,015.
Earlier on the card, Pollard's Vision won the Grade 3, $250,000 Lone Star Derby, and Silent Overdrive captured the $150,000 Refrigerator Handicap for Quarter Horses.
Finally, some light at the end of the dusty tunnel. The 21-day meet that gets under way Sunday at Churchill Downs is the last time fans and horsemen will be inconvenienced by the track's massive renovation project, one that started nearly three years ago but is scheduled for completion before the 2005 spring meet begins next April.
Dale Romans spent the last week in Texas overseeing just two horses and waiting for what might have been the biggest day of his training career. Besides answering the same questions about Kitten's Joy and Roses in May dozens of times, playing a couple of rounds of golf, and wondering just how to kill the extra time on his hands, Romans also was looking forward to another fall meet at Churchill Downs, his home track in Louisville, Ky.
GRAND PRAIRIE, Texas - A clean trip, please. That's what trainer Bret Calhoun wants for Janeian when she starts Sunday in the $100,000 Bluebonnet Stakes. The 1 1/16-mile turf race for fillies and mares is the final program of the fall Breeders' Cup meet at Lone Star Park.
had nowhere to run at the top of the stretch last out in the $100,000 Yellow Rose Breeders' Cup, when she finished third as the favorite. She was moved up to second following the disqualification of winner My Misty Princess, who drifted in sharply in the stretch and interfered with Queena Corrina.
ARCADIA, Calif. - The choices for Miss Loren were for her owners to pay a $400,000 supplemental nomination for the Breeders' Cup Distaff, sit out until mid-December, or switch to turf and run Sunday at Santa Anita on closing day of the Oak Tree meet.
