COLUMBUS, Neb. - The Columbus Races at Agricultural Park get underway Thursday night with a 26-day meet that closes out live racing in the state for the year.
The meet runs through Sept. 14, with a basic schedule of racing on Friday through Sunday. Thursday's highlight is the $7,000-added Inaugural Stakes for 3-year-old fillies going six furlongs.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - Despite being at the center of a political maelstrom that has included a scathing report from the state's attorney general, whispers of federal indictments, and a soon to be released audit from the state comptroller, New York Racing Association president Terry Meyocks was all smiles Monday morning.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - Todd Pletcher isn't the only trainer coming into Saratoga off a record-setting meet somewhere else.
While Pletcher was saddling a record 40 winners at Belmont, Dale Romans was at Churchill Downs saddling a spring-summer meet record 39 winners in winning his fourth straight Churchill trainers' title and the first he didn't have to share with somebody else.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - Trainer Bobby Frankel may be winning all the major stakes races run in New York this year, but Todd Pletcher seems to be winning everything else.
After putting the wraps on a record-setting Belmont spring-summer meet, Pletcher will seek to defend the Saratoga training title he won last year when the 36-day meet gets under way on Wednesday.
Pletcher won a remarkable 40 races during the 55-day Belmont stand that concluded Sunday. That total comfortably surpassed the 36 wins trainer Frank "Pancho" Martin compiled in the 70-day meet in 1982.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - Jerry Bailey dominated the first seven days of the 2002 Saratoga meet. The other 29 belonged to Edgar Prado.
After beginning the meet 4 for 46 - including an 0-for-30 slump - Prado rode a remarkable 50 winners from 204 mounts over the final 29 days to win his first Saratoga riding title, ending Bailey's three-year reign atop the Spa standings. Prado finished the 36-day stand with 54 winners - 10 more than Bailey and one shy of Bailey's Saratoga record, set in 2001, when Bailey went 55 for 200.
DEL MAR, Calif. - Plop down a racetrack alongside a Southern California beach, offer the highest purses in the state, and run 43 days of top-class racing in the middle of summer vacation. It's the blueprint for success at Del Mar.
"It's like 'Bay Watch' meets 'Let It Ride,'" said trainer Don Chatlos. "There's nothing like it, anywhere."
DEL MAR, Calif. - Golden Apples has not raced this year, but last year's champion female turf runner is ready for her scheduled return in Saturday's Grade 1, $400,000 John C. Mabee Handicap at Del Mar. Ben Cecil, who trains Golden Apples, was thrilled with the way Golden Apples looked during her final workout on Monday, when she breezed five furlongs in 1:03.40 on a firm turf course on a beautiful summer morning.
There were afternoons in the mid-1990's when Doug O'Neill found himself 20 feet above the ground, installing cables on telephone poles and dreaming of spending future days as a horse trainer.
Working for his brother's phone company was a living, a way of paying the bills. O'Neill would rise at 5 a.m. to care for a horse or two before dashing off in rush-hour traffic to join the regular work force.
Only in his wildest dreams could O'Neill have envisioned the path his career would take.
DEL MAR, Calif. - After dazzling seasons with the likes of Imperial Gesture, Street Cry, and Eclipse Award winner Tempera to kick off his association with Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, trainer Eoin Harty had a thoroughly forgettable 2002. Most of his runners took ill, he went winless at Del Mar while sending out just six starters, and by season's end, his horses were sent back to winter quarters in Dubai without an attempt at the Breeders' Cup.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. - Patrick Valenzuela continued his dominance in Southern California at Hollywood Park this summer, winning his fourth riding title since he returned to racing from a suspension in late 2001.
Valenzuela, 40, finished the meeting with 81 winners, 12 clear of Victor Espinoza. Alex Solis was third with 48 wins.
