Juan Gutierrez, the leading rider at Portland Meadows, enjoyed the best afternoon of his career there on Monday, winning six of the nine races on the card.
Gutierrez won aboard Nick's Gladiator ($6.20) in the third race and Zoot Scootin Hurli ($13.20) in the fourth. He closed out the day with four straight scores. He was aboard From Mars ($6.40) in the sixth, Cascade Lace ($6.40) in the seventh, Nomoreskoal ($5.80) in the eighth, and Copelan's Choice ($4.20) in the ninth-race nightcap.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. - It is the conundrum facing Eclipse Award voters nearly every year: Do you reward a European import who won her lone start in this country, or an American-based horse with an imperfect record who raced admirably in the United States all year long?
The balloting for champion female turf horse is this year's $64,000 question. The top candidates are a pair of Europeans who won Breeders' Cup races, and a two-time Grade 1 winner who raced throughout the U.S. from April through November.
ALBANY, Calif. - It's been a tough year for trainer Bill McLean, who has saddled only nine winners in 2003.
He hopes to increase that total at Golden Gate Fields on Thursday when he sends out Dancin Candy in a $40,000 starter allowance for 2-year-olds at a mile.
Dancin Candy likely will not be favored in the field of six. Gold Lad, who last ran in the Bay Meadows Juvenile after graduating in a maiden race at a mile, is the probable favorite.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. - Mike Gill, who dominated south Florida racing last winter en route to being the country's leading owner in wins and money won, has his sights set on New York this winter.
Though Gill will not have horses stabled in New York, he plans to be very active during the Aqueduct winter meet, according to trainer Mark Shuman. Gill has 141 horses with Shuman at the Elk Creek Training Center near the Maryland-Pennsylvania border, about a four-hour van ride from Aqueduct.
NEW ORLEANS - Still uprooted Monday morning by his move from Churchill Downs to Fair Grounds, Ronny Werner couldn't even find a pair of his trademark jeans to wear to work, but he pulled things together, donned some khaki-esque pants, and made it to the racetrack to watch his stable star, Badge of Silver, work three furlongs. And from all appearances, this is the same Badge of Silver who burst onto the Kentucky Derby trail last season with brilliant wins in an allowance sprint and the Risen Star Stakes.
MIAMI - Ivanavinalot is not among the 26 fillies and mares nominated to Saturday's $100,000 My Charmer Handicap at Calder. But she could still show up in the entries for the 1 1/8-mile turf race, according to trainer Kathleen O'Connell.
"I am considering supplementing her to the My Charmer and running her against older horses," O'Connell said. "She needs to run and I need to find out if she wants to be a racehorse any more."
OZONE PARK, N.Y. - Horse vans wheeled around the Belmont Park backstretch Monday morning like holiday shoppers in the mall on Black Friday, most picking up stock bound for south Florida. By midafternoon, the winds picked up and the mercury plummeted en route to 30-degree temperatures.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. - Barring something unforeseen in the coming months, the five-time Grade 1 winner Congaree will race as a 6-year-old, his connections confirmed Monday.
Congaree was a smashing 5 1/4-length winner of Saturday's $350,000 Cigar Mile at Aqueduct, the second consecutive year in which Congaree won this Grade 1 race. Though Congaree's final time of 1:34.30 was 1.19 seconds slower than last year, he earned an identical Beyer Speed Figure of 120, validating jockey Jerry Bailey's assertion that the track was one to two seconds slower than a year ago.
When one of the nation's smallest tracks puts up one of the country's biggest purses, people notice. And that's just what officials from Delta Downs in Vinton, La., were hoping would happen when they doubled the purse for Friday night's Delta Jackpot.
The 1 1/16-mile race for 2-year-olds is drawing horses from as far away as Canada and California, including a coupled entry from trainer Bob Baffert - Cooperation and Consecrate. His reason for shipping all the way from Southern California to a town of 3,338 for a race is simple mathematics.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. - The weather in New York has been awful the last month, and the purse money at Calder pales in comparison to what is offered in California this time of year. So what is a trainer who winters in Florida and spends the rest of the year in New York to do with a promising long-distance turf allowance horse this time of year? Christophe Clement has followed the advice of Horace Greeley and is headed west.