MIAMI - About the only one happier to be at the Palm Meadows training center this winter than trainer Barclay Tagg may be the star of his stable, Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner Funny Cide.
"He just loves it up here, and so do I," Tagg said from the clockers stand at Palm Meadows on Tuesday morning, while watching one of his horses breeze. "This is without a doubt the best track I've ever trained over in my career."
INGLEWOOD, Calif. - The results of four stakes over the next 10 days will set the tone for the new year for owner Stan Fulton and trainer Rafael Becerra.
Fulton and Becerra will have runners in two lucrative stakes for 2-year-olds at Hollywood Park this weekend, and two in the first two days of the Santa Anita meet next week.
Saturday, St. Averil starts in the $350,000-estimated Hollywood Futurity, a day before Rahy Dolly runs in the $350,000-estimated Starlet Stakes. Both races are over 1 1/16 miles.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. - Stakes may be in Cyber Slew's future, but for now she seems best suited to races like Friday's seventh at Hollywood Park, a $38,000 optional claimer for California-breds.
After finishing in the top three in her first four starts, Cyber Slew was last in the California Cup Matron on Nov. 8.
She returned to finish second in an allowance race on Nov. 23, and faces a similar field in Friday's six-furlong race.
The runner-up finish last month helped to erase the disappointment from the California Cup, trainer Doug O'Neill said.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. - Trainer Mark Shuman and owner Michael Gill are off to a terrible start at Aqueduct's inner-track meet, with only one winner from 18 starters through Wednesday's card.
Like Magic could be the horse to change Shuman and Gill's fortunes in Friday's feature. The second-level allowance for fillies and mares is a wide-open six-furlong race. Like Magic is among 11 horses in the field, including the entry of Bel Baie and Lavender Lass.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. - Pocus Hocus, the 117-pound highweight for Saturday's $100,000 Ladies Handicap, will miss the race after working poorly, and two other nominees won't run because they are just getting over illnesses.
On Tuesday, Pocus Hocus, who won the Grade 3 Turnback the Alarm on Nov. 1, worked five furlongs in a lethargic 1:06.06 over Belmont Park's training track. Jimmy Jerkens, who trains Pocus Hocus, said it was the second time in a row Pocus Hocus didn't work to his satisfaction.
Evangeline Downs will become the third track in Louisiana to operate a slots casino on Friday night when it opens a 1,627-machine facility at its future site in Opelousas, La. Racing operations will not move to Opelousas until 2005, but revenues from slots will supplement Evangeline's purses immediately, beginning with the track's Thoroughbred meet that opens April 1, 2004.
The 80,000 square-foot casino is opening three months earlier than expected. It is the country's first racino, or racetrack and casino, to be built from the ground up, according to officials with Evangeline.
ALBANY, Calif. - Despite the onslaught of winter rains, careful handling of the Lakeside Turf Course has allowed Golden Gate Fields racing secretary Tom Doutrich to continue to card turf races.
He'll use the turf for Friday's co-feature, a $40,000 starter allowance for fillies and mares at 1 1/16 miles. The race drew eight runners, six of whom scored their lone victories on the turf.
"This course doesn't seem to handle rain as well as some," Doutrich said.
ARCADIA, Calif. - With his racy chestnut color and a generous splash of white on his left rear ankle, Lion Heart is the kind of a colt who looks fast just standing still. He is not an imposing physical presence, but when he turns on the jets, he is startlingly fast, an equine version of San Diego Charger running back LaDainian Tomlinson.
