HOT SPRINGS, Ark. - Trainer Bob Holthus's homebred colt, Perfect Fantasy, is the one to catch in the $50,000 Rainbow, one of two six-furlong stakes for 3-year-old statebreds Saturday at Oaklawn Park. Also on the 11-race card is the $50,000 Rainbow Miss, which drew the undefeated Supreme Discovery.
Holthus, who is in his 50th year of training, raises a limited number of horses at his Kilkerry Farm in Royal, Ark., which was established in 1969.
Louisiana Downs has shortened the distance of its Grade 2, $500,000 Super Derby from 1 1/4 miles to 1 1/8 miles for its 2002 running on Sept. 21. The race is the richest of 45 stakes scheduled for the in Bossier City, La., track's Thoroughbred meet, which runs 80 days, from June 28 to Nov. 10.
Total stakes purses for the meet are $2.6 million.
"If you pull out last year's stakes schedule and compare it to this one, there is very little difference," said Pat Pope, director of racing at Louisiana Downs. "The big difference this year is, really, purses."
PHOENIX - So far Turf Paradise agrees with Genie Magic. Now it's a matter of finding the right level.
A 3-year-old filly, she may have it Saturday, in the featured seventh race, a $20,000 claiming race for a field of nine 3-year-old fillies going 5 1/2 furlongs.
Genie Magic, trained by Eric Kruljac, figures to go favored mainly because of the company she has been keeping, as opposed to her form.
Coastalota will go for her third stakes win of the Sam Houston Race Park meet Saturday night, defending her title in the $30,000 Double Your Flavor Stakes. The seven-furlong race for Texas-bred fillies and mares closes out the 2001-2002 Thoroughbred meet at Sam Houston.
When last she raced in Kentucky, De Bertie finished seventh and last.
Well, no wonder. Every one of her six rivals that November afternoon were Grade 1 stakes winners. There was little shame in getting beaten less than 10 lengths by Forest Secrets and the other top-class fillies in the Falls City Handicap at Churchill Downs.
EAST BOSTON, Mass. - In most sports, the "player to be named later" in a trade rarely amounts to much. The horse racing equivalent paid off Wednesday for trainer Bernard Bramante when 8-year-old Siren Chaser won his maiden in the first race at Suffolk Downs.
Siren Chaser, a gelded son of Corridor Key, toiled in the Maryland maiden ranks as a younger horse until two straight ugly performances in the fall of 1999 prompted his connections tosend him to trainer Glenda Gilday and her companion Richard Retamoza to learn to be a jumper or show horse.
ALBANY, Calif. - College coaches like to say the best thing about freshmen is that they become sophomores.
Trainer Gil Matos knows what they mean. The best thing to happen to Takin It Deep, who won the California Derby for Matos last spring, was turning 4.
"He's muscled up and matured bodywise and mindwise," Matos said of the Cal-bred Takin It Deep, who has earned $243,112 with five victories in 17 starts. "Turning 4 didn't hurt him at all,"
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Trainer Steve Margolis said Thursday that Request for Parole will run next in the April 13 Toyota Blue Grass Stakes at Keeneland, although the trainer is unsure who will ride the colt.
Request for Parole finished a close third under Pat Day in his most recent start, the Lane's End Spiral Stakes last Saturday at Turfway Park. Day apparently has committed to ride Buddha on April 13 in the Wood Memorial Stakes at Aqueduct.
JAMAICA, N.Y. - Zonk, who has enjoyed a strong winter campaign in New York, and Irving's Baby, who dominated a Maryland stakes in her latest, square off in Friday's $100,000-added Next Move Handicap at Aqueduct.
Zonk, at 118 pounds, is the starting highweight among the seven fillies and mares entered in the Grade 3 Next Move. Irving's Baby carries 117.
Either Zonk or Irving's Baby, whose combined earnings total $1,185,458, likely will land the role of the favorite in the 1 1/8-mile Next Move.