Trainer Steve Asmussen won a pair of 3-year-old stakes in the Mid-South last week when Gold Street took the $150,000 Smarty Jones at Oaklawn on Friday and Rowdy Yates proved best in the $100,000 Riley Allison Derby at Sunland Park on Sunday.
Gold Street was making his two-turn debut. Owned by Mike McCarty, he won his second stakes and earned a career-high Beyer Speed Figure of 95.
“The Southwest is highly likely for him,” Asmussen said Tuesday of the Grade 3, $750,000 stakes Feb. 17 at Oaklawn.
Flashy 3-year-old Louisiana-bred No Parole will make his next start Feb. 8 in the $100,000 Premier Night Prince, a one-mile statebred-restricted race at Delta Downs, trainer Tom Amoss said Tuesday.
Amoss had said shortly after No Parole’s race on Jan. 11 that the colt probably would face open stakes competition when he returned to action.
“We’ve reconsidered our thinking on that,” Amoss said.
Sam Houston handled more than $3.2 million on its Houston Racing Festival card of six stakes Sunday, a record for the program, which was established in 2013.
“It certainly went well,” said Frank Hopf, senior director of racing for Sam Houston.
Hopf said approximately $2.9 million was bet by offtrack patrons, while the ontrack crowd of 6,075 wagered more than $383,000 on the card. Both betting categories were records for the Houston Racing Festival.
It appears Lady Apple, Serengeti Empress, and Street Band are headed for a showdown in the Grade 1, $1 million Apple Blossom at Oaklawn Park.
The fillies put on a horse race Sunday at Sam Houston Race Park, where Lady Apple fought up the rail to win the Grade 3, $300,000 Houston Ladies Classic by a half-length over favorite Serengeti Empress. It was another neck back in third to Street Band.
Sonneteer might be the first name you recognize in the featured ninth race Thursday at Fair Grounds, but that doesn’t mean he’s the horse you want to play.
Sonneteer is entered for his 6-year-old debut in a high-level allowance race with multiple conditions and an $80,000 claiming option. All good, but the race is carded for 1 1/16 miles on turf. Sonneteer has a grass win behind him but has done all his best work on dirt. He excelled last spring going 1 1/2 miles winning the Champions Day Marathon at Churchill Downs.
The Arizona Racing Commission has rescinded its permission to allow the simulcasting arm of The Stronach Group to sell signals to state betting outlets, citing a law passed last year.
The racing commission issued the ruling on Friday, one day prior to the Pegasus card at Gulfstream Park in Hallandale, Fla., making that day’s races at the track unavailable to all Arizona customers. Prior to the ruling, the signals controlled by the company, Monarch Content Management, were available to approximately 60 off-track betting outlets affiliated with Turf Paradise.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Trainer Wesley Ward is best known for having fast, precocious, win-early 2-year-olds who aren’t often seen stretching out at age 3. In Hail to the Chief, Ward has a not-so-fast, late-developing juvenile colt who indicates that he wants to run long.
“He wants to go a mile and a half,” Ward said.
He’ll have to wait – perhaps until June – to get the chance to run that far. First, however, Hail to the Chief will get an opportunity to run 1 1/8 miles in Saturday’s Grade 3, $250,000 Withers Stakes at Aqueduct.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Trainer Mark Casse has laid out a new plan for Sir Winston that he hopes can get the 2019 Belmont Stakes winner to Dubai in March.
After scratching Sir Winston from last Saturday’s Jazil Stakes due to the sloppy track, Casse re-entered Sir Winston in a third-level allowance race going a one-turn mile on Friday at Aqueduct. Casse is hoping to use that and then the Bernardini Stakes going 1 5/16-miles at Aqueduct on Feb. 29 as a way to get to the Dubai World Cup on March 28.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Hay Dakota not only won Sunday’s allowance feature, he set a course record, rallying through a narrow opening nearing midstretch to register a three-quarter-length victory over Sombeyay. He ran the 7 1/2 furlongs on the grass in 1:26.91.
Hay Dakota is trained by Jason Servis and was the third win on the card for jockey Irad Ortiz Jr., who won the $3 million Pegasus World Cup the previous afternoon aboard Mucho Gusto.
