SHAKOPEE, Minn. - An accomplished field of grass runners square off in the $40,000 John Bullit Stakes at Canterbury Park. Three of the seven runners entered in the 1 1/16-mile turf contest are recent stakes winners.
Four on the Floor, campaigned by Minneapolis-based Robert Lothenbach, comes to Canterbury Park for trainer Pat Cuccurullo after capturing an allowance at Arlington and winning the Overage Stakes at Hawthorne in May.
Kamolia will have to hold off the powerful closing kicks of Royal Win and Glitzi's Classic to win the $50,000 Bossier City Handicap at Louisiana Downs in Bossier City, La., on Saturday.
Kamolia brings strong company lines to the Bossier City Handicap, a 1 1/16-mile turf race for 3-year-olds that drew eight colts and geldings. In his last start, on May 27 at Lone Star Park near Dallas, he finished a close third to the Bob Baffert-trained Regiment in the $200,000 Diamond A USA Stakes.
Sky Terrace, winner of the Derby Trial at Churchill Downs this spring, is the likely favorite in Saturday's $60,000 Regaey Island Stakes at Ellis Park. The Regaey Island is for 3-year-olds at 1 1/16 miles on turf.
The Regaey Island, which replaces the Kentucky Colonel on the Ellis stakes calendar, honors a former Ellis Park president, Lester Yeager.
Regaey is Yeager spelled backward.
STANTON, Del. - For more than 30 years now, Susan Christiansen has worked countless hours as the manager of Derby Hill Farm in Mt. Airy, Md. Her job entails the kind of back-breaking, all-encompassing, seven-days-a-week work that so often goes unnoticed and unrewarded in the Thoroughbred industry.
"Anything that needs to be done, that's what I do," said Christiansen. "I enjoy working. I always have."
STANTON, Del. - Graham Motion runs a stable in perpetual motion, no pun intended. He has 30 horses at Delaware Park, 15 at Fair Hill, and a handful soon headed to Saratoga.
Early Thursday morning, amid the deafening quiet of the Delaware backstretch, the English-born Motion was waiting for a van to take one of his horses to a veterinary clinic in Virginia, but a major logjam on Interstate 95 on the northeast side of Baltimore had him reconsidering that plan.
"I wonder if I should even bother," he said.
OMAHA, Neb. - Horsemen's Park rolls into the second day of its three-day festival of racing on Saturday with two stakes races on the four-race card, which begins at 2 p.m. The $30,000 Queen's Handicap for fillies at six furlongs and the $27,500 Nebraskaland Handicap for older Nebraska-breds at a mile share top billing on the card.
MIAMI - It may sound like a broken record, but it was raining when entries were drawn Thursday for Saturday's $50,000 Roman Brother Stakes at Calder, a 1 1/16 miles turf stakes for 3-year-olds that seemed destined to wind up on the main track.
Calder's turf course has had practically no action the past six weeks; only two races were run on grass here since June 9, a fact that probably helped the Roman Brother draw nine entries, several of whom likely will start only if the race goes on dirt.
VALLEJO, Calif. - A field of fillies loaded for speed is set for Saturday's $40,000-added Fairfield Stakes at six furlongs at the Solano County Fair.
The speedsters, Pali Princess, Summer Lite, Erica's Smile, and Cinnful Bride (who makes her first start since winning the Bam's Penny last October at Bay Meadows), are joined by Benefit Party and Clickety Cat.
Local trainers Bill Morey, his son Bill, and John Anderson all considered the race carefully. Both Moreys decided to run; Anderson decided to pass the race.
FORT ERIE, Ontario - Jockey Brian Bochinski was hoping to have a little fun when he went to Woodbine to ride Le Cinquieme Essai in a turf allowance race July 7.
Le Cinquieme Essai was coming off a 7 3/4-length score in a 1 1/16-mile maiden race at Fort Erie a month earlier.
"I've always liked the horse, but I really thought I was in for a tough battle," said Bochinski, who has 1,693 lifetime wins heading into Saturday's card.