INGLEWOOD, Calif. - The progress of Green Team from $32,000 claimer to stakes winner in the last four months has caught trainer Jeff Bonde by surprise.
In four starts since being claimed, Green Team has won three races and earned $185,460. The wins range in value from a $40,000 claimer at Del Mar to the California Cup Sprint at Santa Anita last month.
Saturday, Green Team tries for his second stakes win in the $95,000 On Trust Handicap at Hollywood Park.
ALBANY, Calif. - Trainer Jerry McArthur, who just claimed O.K. Mikie for $25,000, will show how highly he regards his new purchase when he sends him out in Saturday's $75,000-added Gold Rush Stakes at Golden Gate Fields.
O.K. Mikie, a 2-year-old gelding who has 3 victories in 4 career starts, suffered his lone defeat in the Oct. 19 Bay Meadows Juvenile, his first race at Saturday's one-mile distance.
McArthur said that Ellen Jackson, O.K. Mikie's breeder and former trainer, "said he wasn't fit for that race, that he'd been at her ranch."
NEW ORLEANS - The 6-year-old Zarb's Luck is by the Louisiana stallion Zarbyev, a son of the top-class turf sire Nureyev, and out of a mare by Vice Regent. The pedigree slants heavily toward grass, and that's why Eddie Johnston reached in and took Zarb's Luck out of a $25,000 maiden claimer at Fair Grounds on the last day of 1999.
"When I claimed him, I was looking for a grass horse to go long," said Johnston. "He didn't want any part of it. The first time we tried him [on turf], at Louisiana Downs, he hopped like a bunny all the way around there."
OZONE PARK, N.Y. - A rare weekday stakes, the $60,000-added Mom's Command, spices things up at Aqueduct on Friday.
Among the six 2-year-old fillies entered is Forest Music, who flopped as the favorite in her last start in the Grade 3 Valley Stream on Nov. 23.
Others in the six-furlong race are Stoic, who finished third in the Valley Stream, and Sweet Vision, who finished second behind Stoic in an allowance race on Halloween.
Crista Talbot made a gutsy career move this fall, when, at 31, she decided to enter a world dominated by teenagers and become an apprentice jockey. She rode her first winner Aug. 30, aboard the Danny Pish-trained Golden John, and is one of a handful of apprentices based this winter at Sam Houston Race Park.
The purse for the Delta Jackpot, a $1 million race for 2-year-olds run last Friday night at Delta Downs, will remain $1 million, said Jack Bernsmeier, senior vice president of Louisiana properties for Boyd Gaming, which owns Delta. But he wants to take the $1 million race concept a step further in Louisiana.
PORTLAND, Ore. - The market for horses was remarkably strong at the Washington Thoroughbred Breeders Association's annual winter mixed sale, held at Emerald Downs last Sunday.
A total of 151 horses sold for $728,600, an average price of $4,793. Gross receipts were up 30 percent, and the average was up 44 percent from last year's winter sale, when 167 horses were sold for $557,200, an average of $3,337 each. The median price also increased from $2,200 to $2,700, a gain of 23 percent.
Hawkish will earn the largest check in the 53-year history of Los Alamitos Race Course on Friday night if he wins the Grade 1, $1,367,650 Los Alamitos Million and collects the $1 million Los Alamitos Bonanza bonus.
The Los Alamitos Million is the first of four Grade 1 races during the year's most important weekend at Los Alamitos. Saturday night, the 2003 world championship could be decided in the $500,000 Champion of Champions. Sunday, the $175,000 Marathon National - the world's richest 870-yard race - and the $155,950 Southern California Derby will be contested.