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."
Monmouth Park will begin its meet on May 14, 2005, two weeks earlier than the traditional Memorial Day weekend launch.
Monmouth's 90-day schedule was part of the 2005 racing schedule approved by the New Jersey Racing Commission on Thursday.
For the third straight year, Monmouth's season will extend beyond Labor Day, to Sept. 25.
The Meadowlands, which, like Monmouth, is owned by the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority, will race 30 days, from Sept. 30 to Nov. 12.
ETOBICOKE, Ontario - Trainer Bob Tiller will be holding a strong hand in Saturday's $136,205 Ontario Fashion at Woodbine if he runs both Winter Garden and Brass in Pocket in the six-furlong handicap for fillies and mares.
Winter Garden, last year's Ontario Fashion winner and the runner-up for Canadian champion 3-year-old filly honors in 2003, has had another lucrative campaign this year, winning 3 of 5 starts.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia - Seven fillies and mares square off in the feature race at Hastings on Saturday. The $35,000 optional sprint drew stakes winners Ice Girl and Lilsisterlightning, but the tough horse could be April Foolish, who has won three times and finished second once in four sprints at this level during the meet.
PORTLAND, Ore. - A full field of 12 Oregon-bred 2-year-old fillies will vie in Saturday's $19,280 Janet Wineberg Stakes at six furlongs.
Contention runs deep in the Janet Wineberg, but Miss Bliss could be favored off her sharp score over maiden special weight company here on Oct. 23. Miss Bliss, a daughter of Baquero who races for Dave Martin, defeated another Wineberg entrant, Wice O Kat, by three-quarters of a length in 1:05.60 for 5 1/2 furlongs to earn the highest Beyer in the field, a 57.
