HOT SPRINGS, Ark. - A change in post position could mean a change in running style for Elusive Sara, who will be looking for her first two-turn win Thursday in the featured ninth race at Oaklawn Park.
The entry-level allowance for 3-year-old fillies will be run at one mile and is worth $32,000.
Elusive Sara tried two turns for the first time in her last start, and drawing the rail, her game plan was no secret. "We were kind of obligated to have to go," said Larry Jones, who trains Elusive Sara.
GRAND PRAIRIE, Texas - Lone Star begins its seventh season of racing with significant changes, foremost among them a change in ownership. Magna Entertainment Corporation, the largest proprietor of racetracks in North America, purchased Lone Star in a deal completed in October, making this Lone Star's first Thoroughbred meet under the Magna banner.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. - Trainer Wesley Ward's primary goal when he shipped Runnin' on Nitro, a promising 3-year-old, to south Florida from his Southern California base nearly two months ago was Saturday's $250,000 Aventura Stakes. But less than a week out from the race, Ward has decided to pass the Aventura in favor of the Grade 3 Illinois Derby the same afternoon at Hawthorne Park.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. - Jockey Jorge Chavez will miss at least five more weeks of action after fracturing three vertebrae in a spill in last month's Florida Derby.
Chavez is now targeting the start of the Belmont meet, which begins May 7, for his return, but even that could be optimistic.
ALBANY, Calif. - Thursday's feature race at Bay Meadows presents a typical handicapping challenge but with a twist.
A talented maiden graduate is facing winners for the first time. The maiden winner is clearly talented but so are the rivals.
Cycle of Life is the maiden winner venturing into the world of winners in Thursday's $50,000 optional claimer at one mile on the turf. Four of her five rivals have already beaten winners, and two of them won their only turf starts.
ARCADIA, Calif. - It is not in trainer Ron Ellis's nature to run a horse five times during the Santa Anita meeting, but he has been forced to do just that with Atswhatimtalknbout, who is expected to be the favorite in Saturday's $750,000 Santa Anita Derby.
HOT SPRINGS, Ark. - Azeri, the 2002 Horse of the Year, and Medaglia d'Oro, one of the top handicap horses in training, are scheduled to fly to Oaklawn Park on Wednesday for their respective starts in the Grade 1, $500,000 Apple Blossom and Grade 2, $500,000 Oaklawn Handicap.
The races will share a card Saturday, the beginning of the Racing Festival of the South. At least one stakes will be held each racing day from then through the end of the meet on April 12.
HOT SPRINGS, Ark. - Stakes-level horses usually run late on a race card, but that won't be the case Wednesday at Oaklawn Park, when graded winners Roxelana and See How She Runs meet in the $37,000 first race, a six-furlong allowance for fillies and mares.
Also in the five-horse field is Princess Jen, a stakes winner who scratched out of the $50,000 Carousel on Saturday in favor of this spot; Endless Hour, a half-sister to Oaklawn stakes winner Endless Parade; and Pretty Rocky.
Apprentice jockey Ryan Fogelsonger, 21, won his third consecutive title on the Laurel-Pimlico circuit by finishing as the leading rider at Laurel Park's winter meet, which ended Sunday.
Fogelsonger rode 93 winners during the 13-week meet to finish 19 ahead of Ramon Dominguez. Mario Pino was third with 55 winners. Fogelsonger rode winners for 32 different trainers.
SAN MATEO, Calif. - Bay Meadows opens its 55-day spring meeting Wednesday, and several of the meet's top stakes are scheduled for April.
A field of at least nine older fillies and mares is likely for the first stakes of the meet, Saturday's $75,000 Miss America Handicap at 1 1/16 miles on the turf. The probable starters include Little Treasure, trained by Laura de Seroux, and the locally based Lindsay Jean, who won the Palo Alto Handicap last spring over the course for trainer Art Sherman and is coming off a victory in the $100,000 Brown Bess Handicap at Golden Gate Fields.