ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. - Five horses were entered Wednesday in the Washington Park Handicap here at Arlington. And for the first time, the name Colonial Colony resonates as more than an afterthought.
Colonial Colony is a 6-year-old Pleasant Colony horse bred and owned by Chris Nolan of Indiana. Thirty starts into his career, Colonial Colony remains eligible for a fourth-level allowance race. He will not be running in one anytime soon.
ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. - Crank up the spin machine to high, but the raw fact of the matter is this: Last Song did not try very hard in her last race.
That, at least, was the opinion of Team Carl Nafzger after Last Song finished third as the even-money favorite in a third-level allowance race July 9 at Arlington Park.
"We might have to try blinkers on her," Ian Wilkes, Nafzger's assistant, said after Last Song's race.
BOSSIER CITY, La. - The conditions for Friday's $27,000 allowance feature read innocuously enough - fillies and mares that have not won $9,300 three times other than - but the field of 10 is more indicative of a stakes field than a weekday headliner.
Several in the 7 1/2-furlong grass race have their sights set on the Sangue Handicap at the same distance over the turf course on Aug. 14. Others in the race are coming in off some freshening, while still others are simply trying to take another step through their conditions.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - Trainer D. Wayne Lukas didn't enter the maiden in last month's Grade 3 Kentucky Breeders' Cup just to help Churchill Downs fill the race.
Lukas felt Consolidator had a legitimate chance to upset the 1-10 favorite, , and he nearly did, falling a neck short in the four-horse field. Consolidator, a $1.25 million yearling purchase, gets another crack at Lunarpal on Thursday when the two head an 11-horse field in the Grade 2, $150,000 Sanford Stakes at Saratoga.
DEL MAR, Calif. - Bobby Frankel took most of his best horses to New York for the summer. But he still took care of his top assistant, Humberto Ascanio, who oversees the West Coast operation when Frankel is away.
Ascanio has 39 runners at Del Mar, and gets to stay at Frankel's time-share on the property of the Four Seasons Aviara in Carlsbad. Sweet.
On Thursday, Ascanio will have to break away for the afternoon from the pool and the cabanas to come to the track and send out a pair of turf runners who figure to be well backed in the pick six sequence.
CHICAGO - It has been a perfect summer for Flip, a Jim Tafel-owned colt who has won three races in three tries at this Arlington meet. Everything has gone Flip's way - now it is time to see how much racehorse he is.
Flip was one of eight horses entered in Arlington's featured seventh race on Thursday, a good race for third-level allowance horses or $62,500 claimers that's emblematic of this surprisingly interesting midweek program.
ETOBICOKE, Ontario - Prince Alphie and Puffer, both coming out of the tough Connaught Cup Stakes, are among a solid field of six in Thursday's Woodbine headliner at a mile on the grass. The $83,700 allowance is limited to nonwinners of $51,840 other than in maiden or claiming races at a mile or over this year.
The second of four Thistledown meets for the 2004 racing season ended Saturday with jockey Huber Villa-Gomez and trainer Rodney Faulkner taking top honors in their respective categories.
Villa-Gomez topped the jockeys with 45 wins from 227 starts. Weldon Cloninger Jr. finished second with 39 wins (205 starts), and Luis Gonzalez took third place with 38 winners (191 starts). Villa-Gomez, Thistledown's leading rider in 2003, also captured the riding title at the track's first meet this year.
