ARCADIA, Calif. – The top juvenile colt in California is done for the year and will be turned out to freshen for a 3-year-old campaign in 2021.
Dr. Schivel, winner of the Grade 1 Runhappy Del Mar Futurity, will ship Thursday from Santa Anita to Rancho Temescal in Ventura County where he will stay until late December or early January.
Jockeys in California will ride under new rules that will greatly restrict the use of whips, beginning on Oct. 1.
Earlier this year, the California Horse Racing Board adopted rules allowing riders to use a whip only in an under-handed motion. Jockeys can use the whip no more than six times in a race and no more than twice in succession before giving the horse a chance to respond.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Gamine, the beaten favorite in the Kentucky Oaks earlier this month, will return to one-turn racing for the remainder of the year, with the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint at Keeneland on Nov. 7 her next target, trainer Bob Baffert said Wednesday morning at Santa Anita.
Gamine is back at Santa Anita, where she is galloping daily as part of an easy training schedule exiting the Oaks.
ARCADIA, Calif. – United will seek to make amends for his lone loss this year when he starts as a heavy favorite on Saturday in the Grade 2, $200,000 John Henry Turf Championship, a 1 1/4-mile grass race for which he tuned up on Wednesday morning at Santa Anita with a three-furlong drill in 37.20 seconds under his regular rider, Flavien Prat.
The work came just five days after United worked six furlongs here in 1:14.80,
“Just wanted to sharpen him up,” said his trainer, Richard Mandella. “Just needed to add a little more to his work the other day.”
ELMONT, N.Y. – Oleksandra, the Australian-bred mare who beat males in the Grade 1 Jaipur at Belmont in June, is back in training at Belmont Park and could return to the work tab by the end of September, trainer Neil Drysdale said.
Oleksandra came out of the Jaipur with a broken splint bone in a foreleg and was given plenty of time off for the bone to heal. Drysdale believes the injury occurred when Oleksandra got bumped out of the gate.
“We hope to get to the Breeders’ Cup,” Drysdale said.
ELMONT, N.Y. – Sweet Bye and Bye has won 7 of 16 starts, but she is still in search of her first non-restricted stakes victory. She tries to achieve that in Saturday’s Grade 3, $100,000 Noble Damsel Stakes at Belmont.
Sweet Bye and Bye is coming off a neck victory in a stakes-caliber allowance at Saratoga, her second start this year for trainer Tony Dutrow. She has made one other start this year, in January for Steve Klesaris. Sweet Bye and Bye actually made her first career start for Dutrow in 2017, finishing third at Saratoga.
Nine months into his American career, jockey Umberto Rispoli is positioned to win the riding title at the Santa Anita autumn meeting, which begins on Friday, if he can get past his friend and rival Flavien Prat.
At the Del Mar summer meeting, which ended earlier this month, Prat was leading rider with 50 wins, one more than Rispoli.
“If you had said before the meeting that I would have almost 50 winners, I wouldn’t believe it,” Rispoli said on Wednesday. “I was looking for the big races and a nice meeting.”
ELMONT, N.Y. – As expected, Saturday’s Grade 2, $150,000 Vosburgh Stakes took on a dramatically different look following the announcement Monday that Volatile, the premier sprinter in the country, was retired due to a hairline fracture of his right front cannon bone.
Trainer Brad Cox will attempt to win the Grade 3 Oklahoma Derby for the second year in a row Sunday when he sends out Shared Sense as the probable favorite in the most prestigious race at Remington Park.
Cox won last year’s Oklahoma Derby with Owendale.
Shared Sense became a stakes winner in July in the Grade 3 Indiana Derby. He races for his breeder, Godolphin.
“He’s doing well,” said Cox, who has given the mount to Richard Eramia.
The 6-year-old Illinois-bred, Michele Boyce-trained Blue Sky Kowboy ran the best race of his life, at least according to the Beyer Speed Figure scale, in a sharp Polytrack allowance score Sept. 12 at Arlington Park. Friday, in the featured first race at Arlington, the 6-year-old Illinois-bred, Boyce-trained Devileye gets his turn at the races.
