PORTLAND, Ore. - Aglo Pilgrim, who has won 19 races in a stellar career than has spanned six years, appears poised to win No. 20 in Friday's 10th race at Portland Meadows, a six-furlong race for $2,500 claimers that has attracted a field of 10.
Aglo Pilgrim, a multiple stakes winner in his best days, hasn't won in five starts at this meeting, but he showed readiness in his last two outings.
NEW ORLEANS - It's no secret. One of the central attractions of winter racing in a warm climate is a usable turf course. And as is so often the case on a Fair Grounds weekday card, grass racing is the principal allure of Friday's 10-race program.
Races seven, eight, and nine all are carded for grass, the seventh a 3-year-old maiden, the eighth and ninth divisions of a first-level allowance for older fillies.
ARCADIA, Calif. - Hollywood Park will launch a $500,000 turf race over 1 1/4 miles for 3-year-old fillies this summer.
According to Martin Panza, the track's racing secretary, the new American Oaks will be run on July 6 and will be the focal point of seven non-restricted stakes for 3-year-old fillies at the spring-summer meeting.
"We decided we should be doing something that no one else is doing," Panza said. "No one else in America has done anything with this division."
PORTLAND, Ore. - The current Portland Meadows meeting, scheduled to run through April 28, will end on Feb. 15 unless the track and the Environmental Protection Agency can reach agreement on two issues involving the track's planned water disposal system. They need to agree on the wording in a consent decree, which among other things would establish a schedule of fines, and the track needs to get the EPA to issue an extension on when the disposal system must begin operation.
JAMAICA, N.Y. - Iron Deputy, a back-to-back winner of the Huntington and Count Fleet stakes, will be sidelined for three months with a leg injury, trainer Jimmy Jerkens said Wednesday.
Iron Deputy, a 3-year-old son of Silver Deputy, came out of his win in the $83,300 Count Fleet on Jan. 5, with a small fracture of the cannon bone.
"It's a little fracture in the cannon bone - [down] low," Jerkens said. "It doesn't need surgery, but we have stopped on him for a while. He'll be out about three months."
ARCADIA, Calif. - Cee Dreams, the winner of the California Cup Matron on Nov. 3, underwent surgery on Monday to have 14 screws inserted in her right foreleg following an injury in a workout last Friday.
According to trainer Peter Eurton, Cee Dreams sustained damage to her suspensories and sesamoids. She is based at the San Luis Rey Downs Equine Medical Clinic, he said.
"Our biggest worry now is infection," Eurton said. "She's a good patient.
"She's walking on it. She seems to be able to put weight on it and give the other leg a break."
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. - Repent, the runner-up in the Breeders' Cup Juvenile and one of the East Coast's top Kentucky Derby hopefuls, will likely make his 3-year-old debut in the Risen Star Stakes at Fair Grounds on Feb. 17, trainer Ken McPeek said Wednesday.
"If I had to choose today, I'd say the Risen Star," said McPeek, who trains Repent for Jerry and Feye Bach's Select Stable. "We think his style will really suit that racetrack and I don't have to run him against his stablemate. I'm leaning toward that race."
Harry "Red" Hedeman, longtime clerk of scales on the New Mexico circuit, died Jan. 21 at age 70 of heart failure at his home in Morgan Mill, Texas.
Hedeman had been retired from racing for three years and was scheduled to be buried on Wednesday, Jan. 23. Hedeman's name is also well-known in rodeo circles as one of his sons, Richard, is a world champion bull rider, and another son, Gary, is a rodeo bull-fighter. Hedeman is also survived by a daughter, Jane.
Prairie Meadows, the central Iowa oval, has released the stakes schedule for its upcoming 53-day Thoroughbred meeting.
Twenty-three stakes worth a combined total of more than $2.3 million will be contested at the April 26-July 6 meet, which will once again be highlighted by the Iowa Festival of Racing.