INGLEWOOD, Calif. - Elloluv, one of the top 3-year-old fillies of 2003, is likely to make her first start of the year in the Grade 2, $150,000 A Gleam Invitational Handicap at Hollywood Park next Saturday.
The invitations and weight assignments for the seven-furlong race for fillies and mares were scheduled to be released this Saturday, and Elloluv's name figures to be prominent among the candidates.
MIAMI - The announcement that Gulfstream Park would seek to expand its racing season within the next two years was "the first volley across the bow" in a potential dates conflict with Calder Race Course, said Ken Dunn, Calder's president.
The expansion plans were described Wednesday night by Frank Stronach, chairman of Magna Entertainment Inc., which is renovating Gulfstream at a cost of $140 million.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. - Patriotic chalk players will love the 5-year-old gelding Bayamo on Sunday at Hollywood Park. He meets easier after finishing second in a Grade 1 stakes, and he towers over four rivals in the Grade 2, $150,000 American Handicap at Hollywood Park.
OCEANPORT, N. J. - Trying to come up with the winner of Sunday's $300,000 Molly Pitcher Breeders' Cup Handicap, a competitive Grade 2 event with a race flow that's difficult to plot, is exasperating. Given the history of the race, however, one obvious contender emerges.
Why not Yell?
OCEANPORT, N. J. - Fircroft, one of seven entered in Sunday's Grade 2, $300,000 Molly Pitcher Breeders' Cup Handicap at Monmouth Park, has become a bit of an enigma for her trainer, Rusty Arnold. She finished second in both the Grade 2 Black-Eyed Susan and the Grade 1 Coaching Club America Oaks as a 3-year-old last year but, for the most part, she has been a disappointment in 2004.
"She did quite a bit as a 3-year-old," said Arnold, "but she hasn't run the way she's capable of since her first start of this year."
CHICAGO - If you reach deep into a dusty corner of memory, you might recall the 2002 Canadian International, in which a young Irish horse named Ballingarry scored an easy, front-running victory and looked to many like a horse for the Breeders' Cup Turf a month later. But his Breeders' Cup was a dud. Nor did Ballingarry, sold privately and left in the U.S., excel in 2003. He won once in five starts and never made a dent in the top of the North American turf division.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Grade 2 Ohio Derby winner Brass Hat is unlikely to race until the fall due to an ankle injury, trainer William Bradley said.
Bradley said Brass Hat appeared to have wrenched his right front ankle during his June 12 Ohio Derby victory over Illinois Derby winner Pollard's Vision. The ankle was examined last week at Lexington's Hagyard Davidson McGee Clinic.
"They said that he may have just bruised it or wrenched it, and they said to give him about three more weeks off and I could start jogging him," said Bradley.
Hammering out a 2005 racing calendar for Texas might take some work after requests for overlapping Thoroughbred dates were submitted to the Texas Racing Commission on Thursday.
Lone Star Park has requested 69 dates for Thoroughbreds, from April 7 to July 17. Sam Houston Race Park has pitched two Thoroughbred meets: 50 days from Jan. 7 to April 10, and 31 days from Oct. 28 to Dec. 23.
Retama Park is asking for its Thoroughbred meet to be pushed back by more than a month next year. It has requested a 43-day season from Sept. 8 to Nov. 19.
The California Horse Racing Board's dates committee heard testimony from the state's major racing associations regarding the 2005 racing calendar Thursday at the Alameda County Fair simulcast facility. The committee will meet again July 23 at Del Mar, at which point it hopes to come up with a proposed schedule that will be voted upon by the full board in August.
GRAND PRAIRIE, Texas - It would be an understatement to say Topango loves turf. Unbeaten on the grass in four such starts, she has won over three different courses and under two different conditions. Sunday, she will be bidding for her fifth straight win when she takes on eight others in the $100,000 Lone Star Oaks at Lone Star Park.
The 1 1/16-mile turf race for 3-year-old fillies is the richest of five turf races on the 10-race card. A fireworks show will follow the program, which has a special twilight post of 5 p.m. Central.