HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – If trainer Billy Gowan needs any Hall of Fame advice with Ride On Curlin, who runs Saturday in the Grade 2, $600,000 Rebel Stakes at Oaklawn Park, he just needs to walk a few paces up his shed row to the stable of Jack Van Berg.
“It’s great to be able to pick his brain,” Gowan said.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. - Trainer Jose Garoffalo said Wildcat Red will work for the first time since capturing the Grade 2 Fountain of Youth Stakes almost three weeks earlier either Friday or Saturday morning, depending upon the weather.
“Right now, the plan is still to take him to the Florida Derby,” Garoffalo said. “He’s doing well, he doesn’t need too much. He’ll just gallop strong and have a couple of easy works before his next start.”
You never know where trainer Steve Asmussen will be from one day to the next, be it a horse sale in Florida or overseeing his string of runners at Fair Grounds or Oaklawn Park, but there is one place he’s usually certain to be found – atop the standings at the tracks where he’s got full strings.
Turfway Park is expecting a full field of 12 3-year-olds for its marquee race, the Grade 3, $550,000 Spiral Stakes on March 22.
Tamarando, trained by Jerry Hollendorfer, looks like the probable favorite off his victory in the Grade 3 El Camino Real Derby at Golden Gate Fields on Feb. 15. Hollendorfer has won the Spiral twice, with Event of the Year in 1997 and Globalize in 2000.
The Spiral offers 85 qualifying points for the May 3 Kentucky Derby, with 50 points to the winner.
The $1 million Wood Memorial, New York’s final prep for the Kentucky Derby, will be shown on NBC Sports as part of a 90-minute broadcast that also will include the Santa Anita Derby.
The Wood will be race 10 on a 12-race card on April 5 that will begin at 1 p.m. Eastern, instead of the usual 1:20 p.m. Post time for the Wood is 5:40 p.m., and it is one of four graded stakes on the program.
Also on the Wood card are the Grade 1 Carter Handicap, which will be run as race 11, and the Bay Shore and Gazelle, two stakes that will precede the Wood.
HOT SPRINGS, Ark. - Strong Mandate’s training for the Grade 2, $600,000 Rebel Stakes at Oaklawn Park on Saturday has been designed to shake off the memory of the out-of-sorts trip he had when second in last month’s Southwest Stakes. He is one of eight horses that were entered in the Rebel when the race was drawn on Wednesday. Strong Mandate will break from post 4.
Vicar’s in Trouble will be returning to Fair Grounds for the Louisiana Derby on March 29, according to owner Ken Ramsey, after a foot ailment forced the horse’s connections to rule out the March 23 Sunland Park Derby.
The winner of the Jan. 18 Lecomte Stakes at Fair Grounds by nearly seven lengths, Vicar’s in Trouble was sent to trainer Mike Maker’s main winter base at Gulfstream Park after the colt ran third as the favorite in the Feb. 22 Risen Star at Fair Grounds.
WHO’S HOT
Ring Weekend, the winner of the Tampa Bay Derby, is one of four additions to this week’s Derby Watch top 20, along with Bobby’s Kitten, who won an allowance race at Tampa in his 2014 debut, and both Hoppertunity and Tamarando, who were “On the Bubble” horses in previous weeks and finally forged their way onto the list.
[ROAD TO THE KENTUCKY DERBY: Prep races, point standings, replays]
Sometimes, you know in November. Many years, it is April, or even Kentucky Derby Week.
You see a horse and say, “That is the one.” Given that I am in the middle of chasing basketballs around the country, I will admit that I had not seen a single one of California Chrome’s races until I fired up my laptop to watch the San Felipe Stakes last Saturday.
On Tuesday, trainer Tom Amoss sent Delta Jackpot winner Rise Up out to work a bullet five furlongs in 1:00. It was Rise Up’s second work since he finished seventh in the Feb. 22 Risen Star Stakes, his 3-year-old debut.
Rise Up, a front-running horse, basically lost all chance at the start when he broke very poorly and had to rush into contention around the first turn. Rise Up has worn blinkers in both post-Risen Star works, and Amoss said he plans to employ the equipment March 29 in the Louisiana Derby.
