INGLEWOOD, Calif. - Jason Lumpkins, currently the second leading rider at Bay Meadows, is relocating to Southern California for the second half of the summer, according to his agent, Dennis Patterson.
Lumpkins plans to ride in northern California through the Alameda County Fair at Pleasanton on July 7 and ride briefly at Hollywood Park before the start of the Del Mar meeting on July 24.
Patterson did not expect the move to be permanent.
ELMONT, N.Y. - Trainer Tim Tullock and S J Bee Stable blew into Belmont Park last year and won the Flash Stakes with Buster's Daydream. The same connections might have in Renegade Warrior the horse to beat in Friday's $100,000-added Flash.
Eight 2-year-old colts are entered in the five-furlong Flash, a Grade 3.
ELMONT. N.Y. - Harlan's Holiday, whose victories in the Florida Derby and Blue Grass made him the lukewarm favorite in the Kentucky Derby, where he finished seventh, has transferred barns from Ken McPeek to Todd Pletcher.
Harlan's Holiday shipped to New York Wednesday from Churchill Downs on the same plane that brought Derby and Preakness winner War Emblem to Belmont for Saturday's Belmont Stakes.
There were few surprises in a blink-and-you-miss-it Hawthorne spring meet that concluded Tuesday. Business followed industry-wide trends during the 23-day meet. Fans at the track and in associated betting parlors wagered more this year than last on full card simulcasts, but handle on Hawthorne's live product declined from 2001 levels.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - They are the unsung heroes, the ones who rise before dawn to sweat and grunt and worry, all to minimal fanfare. They are the support team - four men and one woman - who have been most instrumental in the day-to-day care of War Emblem, who on Saturday at Belmont Park will bid to become the 12th Triple Crown winner.
NEW YORK - Barry Schwartz, the chairman of the New York Racing Association knows that some New Yorkers have voiced objections to the presence of Ahmed bin Salman, a Saudi Arabian prince, at Belmont Park on Saturday to watch his horse, War Emblem, try to win the Triple Crown.
"Yes, some people are rooting against War Emblem," Schwartz said on Tuesday. "I think it's silly. But you hear it."
ELMONT, N.Y. - Last summer, when a particularly fallow period for trainer D. Wayne Lukas ended with a victory by Scorpion in the Jim Dandy Stakes, a newsletter distributed at Saratoga marked the occasion with a caricature of Lukas, inside of a coffin, propping open the lid with the caption, "I ain't dead yet."
SAN MATEO, Calif. - Questions abound in Friday's co-features at Bay Meadows.
The evening's opening race is a 7 1/2-furlong starter allowance race on the turf for fillies and mares who have never won two races. Four of the five starters won or finished within a nose of winning their previous start.
On Saturday, closing day of the Remington Park Quarter Horse meet, defending world champion Tailor Fit goes for his fourth straight Grade 1 Remington Park Championship victory. Also at Remington Saturday, Tailor Fit's stablemate Drip Dry Dash will be after his third straight win in the $21,330 MCI Oklahoma Challenge at 870 yards.
Both Tailor Fit and Drip Dry Dash are trained by Janet VanBebber.
AURORA, Colo. - Six trials for the Cherry Creek Futurity and expanded simulcast coverage highlight opening day of Arapahoe Park's 41-day summer meet on Friday.
The $33,500-added Cherry Creek Futurity, a restricted, Grade 3 race for Colorado-breds to be run June 22, is one of 12 stakes on the Quarter Horse schedule, headed by the closing day feature, the $100,000 Mile High Futurity on Sept. 2.