Lone Sailor had his first breeze since finishing second in the Louisiana Derby when he went a half-mile in 47.80 seconds before dawn Wednesday over a fast Churchill Downs track. James Graham, who has the mount for the Kentucky Derby, was aboard.
“He’s always been a very good work horse,” said Tom Amoss, who trains Lone Sailor for GMB Racing. “He was in hand and showed good extension of stride and all the things you’re looking for in an important work like this.”
LEXINGTON, Ky. – Keith Desormeaux was taken by surprise when informed by phone that My Boy Jack had drawn the outside post in a field of 12 3-year-olds for the Grade 3, $200,000 Lexington Stakes on Saturday at Keeneland.
“The 12-hole?” said Desormeaux, who trains My Boy Jack for Don’t Tell My Wife Stables and Monomoy Stables. “I thought there were only like seven running. It seems like the Derby gods are working against us, huh?”
Except for the college basketball teams at Villanova and Notre Dame, no one has had a better spring than trainer Todd Pletcher, who has shrewdly plotted the placement of his 3-year-olds to knock off three of the biggest final-round Kentucky Derby preps in this country and will seek a fourth on Saturday in the Grade 1 Arkansas Derby with Magnum Moon.
HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – Oaklawn Park will race into May next year in the most significant change to its racing calendar since World War II, the track announced Wednesday. The 2019 meet is scheduled to open two weeks later, on Jan. 25, and run through May 4, the date of next year’s Kentucky Derby.
ARCADIA, Calif. – There will be plenty of racing at Santa Anita during the spring-summer meeting that begins on Friday.
Tim Ritvo, the chief operating officer of The Stronach Group, the track’s parent company, said on Wednesday that the number of races run on a daily basis is likely to increase during the season, which runs through June 24.
Ritvo said the goal is to add one or two races a day compared to the corresponding racing days in 2017.
“We’re looking to expand if we can,” he said. “The balance is what the inventory can take.”
Led by the Grade 2 Great Lady M. Stakes for female sprinters, Los Alamitos will host three stakes during its summer meeting, which runs from June 29 to July 15.
The three-week meeting will have a three-day opening week, followed by a five-day racing week that will include racing on Wednesday, July 4. The final week of the meeting will operate on a Thursday-through-Sunday basis, from July 12-15.
HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – It won’t be easy, but Streamline has a chance Friday to complete an amazing grand slam at Oaklawn Park in the Apple Blossom Handicap.
Streamline, who is trained by Brian Williamson and owned by his mother-in-law Nancy Vanier, has won stakes at Oaklawn the past three years. She won the Pippin in 2016, the Grade 2 Azeri in 2017, and the Grade 3 Bayakoa this February.
HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – The two graded stakes on the second day of the Racing Festival of the South at Oaklawn Park on Friday have drawn decidedly different fields. Unique Bella will be odds-on in the Grade 1 Apple Blossom Handicap, while the wagering will be spread among several 3-year-old fillies in the Grade 3 Fantasy.
