Jockey’s goggles can be used by health-care workers in the fight against coronavirus.
Buoyed by Shirley Jerkens, the wife of trainer Jimmy Jerkens, jockeys at tracks currently racing in Florida, Oklahoma, and Arkansas are collecting new and used jockey’s goggles to send to hospitals nationwide for doctors and nurses to use as eye protection while treating coronavirus patients.
HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – Trainer Steve Asmussen has a pair of graded stakes winners on deck for the Arkansas Derby next Saturday in Basin and Silver Prospector.
Basin won last year’s Grade 1 Hopeful at Saratoga, and Silver Prospector has captured both the Grade 2 Kentucky Jockey Club Stakes at Churchill Downs and the Grade 3 Southwest at Oaklawn.
HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – Warrior’s Charge will start for a home team of sorts next Saturday in the Grade 2, $600,000 Oaklawn Handicap.
Ten Strike Racing is the majority owner of Warrior’s Charge. The syndicate’s co-founders, Marshall Gramm and Clay Sanders, are based in nearby Memphis, Tenn.
Warrior’s Charge will start as a top contender off his win in the Grade 3, $500,000 Razorback Handicap here Feb. 17. He set the pace and dug down deep for a head win in what was his second stakes appearance behind a close fourth-place finish in last year’s Preakness.
Turns out there will be a Kentucky Derby run this year on the first Saturday of May after all. And it will be star-studded.
Churchill Downs announced Thursday that NBC will broadcast a virtual Kentucky Derby on May 2 featuring all 13 winners of the Triple Crown. The computer-simulated race will be shown during a three-hour broadcast on NBC from 3-6 p.m. Eastern, in a window traditionally reserved for the running of the real Kentucky Derby, which this year has been postponed to Sept. 5 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Churchill Downs has delayed the reopening of stable areas at its Louisville track and a nearby training center to May 5, a setback that likely indicates that a return to live racing in Kentucky remains at least three weeks away.
Los Alamitos is likely to conduct its two-week Thoroughbred meeting in late June and early July without spectators or horse owners present ontrack due to the coronavirus outbreak, track officials told the California Horse Racing Board on Wednesday.
Entries for the May 2 Arkansas Derby will be taken Sunday at Oaklawn Park, and there will be plenty of scoreboard watching, because the number of horses who enter the race will impact whether it is split into two divisions. If it’s not, Charlatan, one of the most highly ranked 3-year-olds in the country, is in danger of not getting in based on the race conditions.
Trainer Todd Pletcher nominated five 3-year-olds to Saturday’s $75,000 Unbridled Stakes and ultimately decided to enter just one, Dr Post, in the 1 1/16-mile race for 3-year-olds. The Unbridled, an overnight stakes created by Gulfstream to help fill the dearth of races for 3-year-olds with many jurisdictions shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic, drew a field of seven.
Irad Ortiz Jr. believes he’s fit physically and – perhaps more importantly – mentally ready to return to race riding Saturday at Gulfstream Park.
Ortiz, the two-time reigning Eclipse Award-winning jockey, is named on nine horses on Saturday’s 12-race card, including Dr Post in the $75,000 Unbridled Stakes for 3-year-olds.
Ortiz has not ridden since March 19, owing in large part to the requests of his family, in particular his wife, Meliza, who is pregnant with the couple’s third child.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Tampa Bay Derby winner King Guillermo will say bon voyage to South Florida for the better part of the next month when he boards a van bound for Oaklawn Park along with stablemate Trophy Chaser at 6 p.m. Wednesday. Approximately 12 hours earlier, he turned in the last in a series of very impressive works in preparation for the Grade 1 Arkansas Derby on May 2.
