SAN MATEO, Calif. - The importance of having a recent race will be one of the factors handicappers must weigh in Thursday's Bay Meadows feature, a $25,000 claimer at 1 1/16 miles.
Dixie Thrill, who ran fourth against similar company on the turf in his last start, has recency in his corner.
Aud was one of four horses who flew into the Dallas area from Kentucky on Tuesday for Lone Star Park's opening weekend stakes. She will be one of the favorites for the inaugural $100,000 Yellow Rose Breeders' Cup on Sunday.
Lone Star will open for a 19-date meet on Friday night. The track has never run a Thoroughbred meet in the fall, but it is doing so this year to accommodate its hosting of the Breeders' Cup World Thoroughbred Championships on Oct. 30. The meet will end on Oct. 31.
ETOBICOKE, Ontario - Two stakes races will be run here this weekend and - surprise, surprise - Todd Kabel has a live mount for both.
Kabel, the runaway leader in the jockey standings here, has won 29 of the 80 stakes run at the meeting and did not participate in 13. On Saturday, Kabel retains the mount on Strut the Stage for the Sky Classic and on Sunday he will ride Dancehall Deelites in the Mazarine.
MIAMI - Bill White had originally planned on training his leading 2-year-old hopeful Cin Cin up to the $400,000 In Reality division of the Florida Stallion Stakes on Oct. 23. But White, Calder's perennial leading trainer, had a change of heart and will instead send out Cin Cin along with stablemates D'court's Speed and Do Run Run in Saturday's $100,000 Foolish Pleasure Stakes.
Cin Cin has posted one-sided victories in each of his last two starts, including a five-length win over Favre and the odds-on B. B. Best in the seven-furlong Affirmed Stakes on Sept. 6.
Sarava, the 2002 Belmont Stakes winner, has been retired with an injury to the suspensory ligament in his right foreleg. A 5-year-old son of Wild Again, Sarava reaggravated the injury, which he originally sustained two years ago, in a work on Monday at Belmont Park.
Sarava had been scheduled to run in Saturday's Grade 1, $1 million Jockey Club Gold Cup.
Bob Baffert, Sarava's trainer, said stud plans have yet to be finalized.
ARCADIA, Calif. - The start of the Oak Tree at Santa Anita meeting on Wednesday gives Belleski an excellent opportunity to extend a winning streak on a turf course she has shown she adores.
Unbeaten in three starts on Santa Anita's signature hillside turf course, Belleski will be trying to defend her title in the $100,000 Sen. Ken Maddy Handicap over about 6 1/2 furlongs.
The Grade 3 Maddy is the highlight of a nine-race program that launches the five-week Oak Tree meeting, which runs through Oct. 31.
ARCADIA, Calif. - An already crowded menu of multi-win bets will grow on Wednesday when the Oak Tree Racing Association begins its annual fall meeting at Santa Anita with a $1 pick five.
The daily bet will cover the final five races and is designed to capture the existing interest on the $2 pick six and the $1 pick four, which cover the final six and four races.
The pick five may have a built-in advantage.
ARCADIA, Calif. - In the mid-1990's, trainer Jim Cassidy was searching for a way to invigorate his Southern California stable. With a barn of modest horses, Cassidy wanted to avoid falling into the easy trap of becoming a claiming trainer.
The solution was more than 5,000 miles away - at the annual Tattersalls horses in training sale in Newmarket, England.
POMONA, Calif. - Jockey Martin Pedroza, trainer Doug O'Neill, and betting favorites were the hot commodities at the Los Angeles County Fair meet, which ended Sunday at Fairplex Park.
Pedroza set a single-season record for wins, with 51 from 134 mounts, topping the 48-win mark established by David Flores over a 19-day meet in 1991. Pedroza won at a 38 percent clip, and, with mount earnings of $1,000,142, became the first Fairplex rider to break the $1 million mark.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - As expected, none of the races that Kentucky Downs staged Saturday in its seventh annual Kentucky Cup turf festival produced any serious contenders for the Oct. 30 Breeders' Cup, which is not to say the series was not lively and eventful.
