LEXINGTON, Ky. – It’d be easy to blame the latest defeat for Four Graces on her taking part in a sustained duel that seemed to set the table for a come-from-behinder.
But Ian Wilkes declines to do so. Wilkes, who on Saturday will send out Four Graces in the Grade 2, $200,000 Raven Run at Keeneland, gives “total respect” to Sconsin, the Greg Foley-trained filly who rallied to defeat Four Graces when last they met in the Grade 2 Eight Belles on Sept. 4 at Churchill Downs.
ELMONT, N.Y. – Jockey Irad Ortiz Jr. won six races in his first three days back riding, topped by the Grade 1, $250,000 Jockey Club Gold Cup aboard Happy Saver.
Ortiz, who also won Saturday’s Grade 2 Sands Point on Tamahere and Sunday’s Grade 3 Matron on Royal Approval, missed 23 days of action due to suspensions for careless riding and testing positive for COVID-19.
ELMONT, N.Y. – Oh, baby, was it a good week for trainer Phil Gleaves, who on Oct. 6 won the Aspirant Stakes at Finger Lakes with Thin White Duke and on Sunday captured the Grade 3 Futurity at Belmont Park with Second of July.
The win by Second of July, his second in three weeks, earned him a spot in the $1 million Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf Sprint, to be run Nov. 6 at Keeneland. It will be Gleaves’s fourth Breeders’ Cup starter, and his first since Mambo Meister finished fifth in the 2009 Dirt Mile.
ELMONT, N.Y. – Tacitus may have been a huge disappointment in Saturday’s Grade 1 Jockey Club Gold Cup, but it was hardly a lost weekend for Hall of Fame trainer Bill Mott.
Shortly after Tacitus finished third as the 3-5 favorite in the Jockey Club Gold Cup, Mott watched from Belmont as Harvey’s Lil Goil won the Grade 1 Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Keeneland.
MIAMI – On Sunday morning, Tonalist’s Shape worked five furlongs in 1:00.62 at Gulfstream Park. On Monday morning, she boarded a van for Keeneland where she’ll make her next start in Saturday’s Grade 2 Raven Run, a seven-furlong race for 3-year-old fillies.
Tonalist’s Shape will be looking to get back to her top form after finishing fourth in the Grade 1 Coaching Club American Oaks at Saratoga on July 18 and fifth in the Grade 3 Charles Town Oaks on Aug. 28. She was favored in both races.
Papa’s Golden Boy will appreciate the class relief and the move back to a sprint when he runs in a nonwinners-of-two allowance race for 3-year-olds and up at Emerald Downs on Thursday.
The six-furlong dash drew five horses and goes as the first of 10 races. Post time is 5 p.m. Pacific.
The conditions of the race allow Washington-bred nonwinners of three to run. The last time Papa’s Golden Boy ran in a non-stakes race, he romped in a similar race on July 16.
ARCADIA, Calif. – The decision came down to law books or riding horses earlier this year for Jessica Pyfer.
The law books are on the shelf.
Pyfer, a 10-pound apprentice jockey, began her career at Santa Anita on Sept. 25 and rode her first winner with her sixth mount in the final race on Friday.
“It was awesome,” Pyfer recalled on Sunday.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Juan Hernandez finished the Del Mar summer meeting last month with 29 wins, good enough for fourth in the standings. Understandably, Hernandez had high expectations for the current Santa Anita autumn meeting and has thrived since the start of the five-week season on Sept. 25.
Through Sunday, Hernandez was second in the standings with 15 wins, one win behind leader Flavien Prat. Hernandez has been boosted by four three-win days at the meeting, the most recent occurring on Friday and Saturday.
LEXINGTON, Ky. – The 17-day Keeneland fall meet hits its exact midpoint Wednesday when a pair of allowances (races 4 and 7) for females anchor an eight-race card that starts at the usual 1:05 p.m. Eastern.
Race 4 is a $71,000, first-level allowance route for which Market Rumor is the 7-5 program favorite when facing five other fillies and mares. The Ian Wilkes-trained filly most recently was a close second in the Sept. 7 Weber City Miss at Laurel Park.
LEXINGTON, Ky. – Amid what’s supposedly a down period, Dale Romans sure does have a lot of bullets for the Breeders’ Cup.
Last year, Romans totaled his fewest number of wins, 36, since 1997 and his lowest stable earnings, $3.08 million, since 2002. With still two-plus months to go in 2020, his wins (30) and earnings ($2.55 million) are on pace to surpass 2019, but not by much – unless he has a big showing at the Nov. 6-7 Breeders’ Cup at Keeneland.
