NEW ORLEANS - It has happened before. A turf horse comes to New Orleans for the winter and suddenly gets good. Tabianka in fact has never been better, and she has a legitimate chance to win the $150,000 Bayou Breeders' Cup Handicap on Saturday at Fair Grounds.
ARCADIA, Calif. - The unlikely success story of Freedom Crest could add another unfathomable chapter should he win Saturday's $1 million Santa Anita Handicap.
Freedom Crest already has been an overachiever. Taken from a maiden race for a claiming price of $32,000 in June 1999, Freedom Crest has gone on to earn more than $600,000. A 6-year-old gelding, he has won a pair of graded stakes, and scored a shocking 39-1 upset in last fall's Goodwood Breeders' Cup Handicap, when he beat Tiznow, who subsequently won the Breeders' Cup Classic.
ARCADIA, Calif. - The pressure is off in Saturday's $1 million Santa Anita Handicap for Hall of Fame trainer Richard Mandella.
He has two starters - Cagney and Kudos - but neither is well known nationally, neither will be favored, and there are questions surrounding their ability on dirt.
They are part of a wide-open Big Cap that could easily produce a longshot winner and give Mandella his third victory in the race.
The lack of pressure is evident in Mandella's mood as he prepares the duo.
"This is just fun," he said.
JAMAICA, N.Y. - When Pat Reynolds declined an invitation to take Peeping Tom to Dubai last year for the Golden Shaheen, a friend told him he passed on an opportunity of a lifetime.
Reynolds wasn't going to make the same mistake twice.
Reynolds confirmed on Thursday that he will ship Peeping Tom to Dubai on March 10 to run in the $1 million Godolphin Mile at Nad al Sheba Racecourse on March 23. The Godolphin Mile is one of the supporting stakes on the Dubai World Cup card.
Touch Love, a graded stakes winner, and Magic Weisner, whose long-range plans could include the Preakness, lend spice to Saturday's $75,000 Deputed Testamony for Maryland-breds at Laurel Park.
Touch Love is the only filly among the seven 3-year-olds entered in the 1 1/16-mile Deputed Testamony.
Touch Love, a winner of three starts last year for trainer Tony Dutrow, including the Grade 2 Schuylerville at Saratoga, went to the sidelines after the Schuylerville with sore shins.
EAST BOSTON, Mass. - Tuesday's fifth-race victory by jockey Vernon Bush aboard Al Bark came against five rivals, but also over some physical and mental demons.
A five-time leading Suffolk Downs jockey in the early 1980's, Bush has always had tremendous talent and ability, but his career has been hampered by off-track difficulties.
His latest comeback at age 40, comes after seven months of adjusting his lifestyle around a new diet.
With weight problems the root cause for much of his past stress, Bush is optimistic about the future.
PHOENIX - The two times Kendrick Peak has raced she has been asked to leap over a tall building in a single bound.
She was asked to face winners in her debut; she passed with flying colors. In her second start she was asked to face stakes horses, off a layoff, routing for the first time. Again, no problem.
Sportsman's Park, at least temporarily, is out of the auto racing business it got into only three years ago. Its massive 70,000-seat grandstand, built to accommodate crowds at stock car races, will sit virtually empty during a 46-day Thoroughbred meet that begins Friday. The track is in discussions with neighboring Hawthorne Race Course about a potential merger that could move horse racing away from Sportsman's, perhaps permanently.
The Maryland Jockey Club has canceled the Grade 1 Pimlico Special this year in an effort to make peace with its horsemen.
The elimination of the $600,000 Special, which is normally run one week before Pimlico's other Grade 1 race, the Preakness Stakes, went hand-in-hand with another $175,000 in stakes cuts from the Pimlico meet. Horsemen and the MJC reached agreement on the cuts during negotiations late Tuesday night.
ARCADIA, Calif. - Giant Gentleman's trainer is Brent Sumja. It says so, right there in the past performances for the Santa Anita Handicap. The designation is a partial misnomer, however, and Sumja acknowledges Giant Gentleman's success this winter - he was runner-up in the Malibu and Strub Stakes - is largely because of trainer Jenine Sahadi, who has stabled the 4-year-old horse since mid-December.