HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – The 3-year-olds that trainer Donnie Von Hemel put on the track over opening weekend at Oaklawn Park performed like they worked for the postal service. They delivered despite snow, rain, and fog.
Oaklawn Park battled all of those conditions last week, losing Friday’s opening-day program to the lingering effects of a snowstorm, and then having fog settle over the oval for the Monday card.
NEW ORLEANS – The post position draw for the Grade 3, $100,000 Lecomte, the anchor to Fair Grounds’s first big stakes day of the season on Saturday, did not take long. Only five horses were entered in the Lecomte, the first of three graded stakes races for 3-year-olds to be run at this meet.
OZONE PARK, N.Y – Trainer Richard Dutrow Jr. already has a solid group of 3-year-olds stabled at Gulfstream Park. Another one will soon be on the way.
Flashpoint, on the basis of a scintillating 6 1/4-length debut victory at Aqueduct on Saturday, will soon be headed to south Florida, where he will be pointed to the Grade 2, $150,000 Hutcheson Stakes at seven furlongs on Feb. 26.
ARCADIA, Calif. - Tapizar’s win in the Grade 3 Sham Stakes at Santa Anita on Saturday confirmed trainer Steve Asmussen’s belief that the colt will play an important role in the build-up to the Kentucky Derby.
Tapizar won his stakes debut in the Sham, disputing the pace through the first quarter-mile before taking the lead and winning by 4 1/4 lengths in a quick 1:40.38 for 1 1/16 miles. Tapizar earned a career-high Beyer Speed Figure of 97 in the Sham, which was preceded by an emphatic win by 10 1/2 lengths against maidens at Churchill Downs on Nov. 27.
ARCADIA, Calif. - Santa Anita’s return to a dirt surface this season prompted trainer Steve Asmussen to finally send a string of horses to the West Coast, and California fans are quickly realizing that wherever Asmussen runs, he wins.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Comma to the Top, who has emerged as the leading 3-year-old in California in the last two months, is likely to make his next start in the $200,000 El Camino Real Derby at Golden Gate Fields on Feb. 12.
Trainer Peter Miller said Thursday that the El Camino Real Derby over 1 1/8 miles on Golden Gate’s synthetic Tapeta Footings surface is preferred to the $250,000 Robert Lewis Stakes over 1 1/8 miles on a dirt track at Santa Anita the same day.
“At this point, we’re leaning toward Golden Gate,” Miller said. “We know he likes that track.”
MIAMI – Kathy Ritvo watched the 2008 Kentucky Derby on television with her cardiologist in the critical care unit of Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami. Suffering from cardiomyopathy, or a severe deterioration of the heart muscle, Ritvo was in the first month of an interminable wait for a donor. She spent the next six months hooked up to an intravenous machine that provided medication to keep her heart functioning, uncertain whether she would live to see another Derby. Much of that time, she was confined to Jackson Memorial as the search for a donor continued.
LEXINGTON, Ky. − The Factor’s recent record-setting maiden win at Santa Anita opened a lot of eyes, but not Kim Valerio’s.
Valerio, 42, thought the War Front colt could be special much earlier, back when he was a yearling in search of a buyer. Valerio spotted him at Fasig-Tipton Kentucky’s July select yearling sale in 2009. When he failed to reach his reserve price in the auction ring, she bought him privately for $40,000.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Arthur’s Tale has the pedigree, connections, and price tag to be a significant horse. A nonfactor in his first three starts, Arthur’s Tale stepped up with a visually impressive maiden victory when stretched out around two turns for the first time in his last outing.
On Saturday, Arthur’s Tale moves into stakes company for the first time when he meets six rivals in the $65,000 Count Fleet – the first dirt stakes of the year for 3-year-olds – at a mile and 70 yards over Aqueduct’s inner track.
MIAMI – When trainer Steve Standridge and owner-breeder Bill Terrill made the decision to ship their Delta Jackpot winner Gourmet Dinner across country from his home base at Calder Race Course here to Hollywood Park for last Saturday’s CashCall Futurity, they didn’t expect the bumps in the road they would encounter prior to and during the running of the final Grade 1 race for 2-year-olds in 2010.
