HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Besides the Florida Derby and a mandatory Rainbow 6 disbursement, next Saturday’s 14-race card also will offer six undercard stakes, four of them graded. Here’s a quick rundown of the graded races:
◗ Grade 2, $300,000 Gulfstream Park Mile: The 2017 Kentucky Derby winner, Always Dreaming, is expected to make his 4-year-old debut when he faces Irish War Cry in this one-turn mile. Other probables include Conquest Big E, Page McKenney, Tommy Macho, and Texas Tower.
Jockey Miguel Mena said he is likely to miss at least six months of racing because of injuries to his right ankle and heel sustained in a spill in the eighth race March 15 at Fair Grounds.
Mena was injured when his mount, A Fashion Affair, crashed into Ellashoo after that filly broke down catastrophically while leading on the far turn of a dirt sprint. A Fashion Affair was racing inside and just behind the stricken animal.
“I was following the horse on the lead,” Mena said Thursday by phone. “I had no time to do anything.”
Take Charge Paula, who will make her fourth start of the Gulfstream Park meet in next Saturday’s Gulfstream Park Oaks, worked a half-mile in 49.60 seconds Friday at the Palm Meadows training center in South Florida.
Take Charge Paula worked in company with Enticed, the Grade 3 Gotham winner, who is pointing to the Grade 2 Wood Memorial at Aqueduct on April 7.
Jose Ortiz, who worked Take Charge Paula on Friday, will be aboard the filly in the Gulfstream Oaks, replacing Paco Lopez, according to trainer Kiaran McLaughlin.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Madam Dancealot, who won the third graded or group stakes of her career in the Grade 2 Santa Ana Stakes at Santa Anita on March 18, may race only in Grade 1 turf races through the spring.
Trainer Richard Baltas said the 4-year-old Madam Dancealot is a candidate for the Grade 1 Gamely Stakes at 1 1/8 miles on May 26 here, with a possible start in the Grade 1 Jenny Wiley Stakes at 1 1/16 miles on April 14 at Keeneland.
“I’ll point her for the Gamely,” Baltas said. “We could take a shot at Keeneland.”
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Surely it will have to wait until he returns to Maryland next month, but the countdown is on for Edgar Prado as the Hall of Fame jockey nears the 7,000-win milestone.
Prado won the first race here Wednesday aboard Straight Tequila for career victory No. 6,990. He has said his immediate goals are to become just the eighth jockey in North American racing history to win 7,000 races and to pass Angel Cordero Jr. (7,057) for seventh on the all-time list. Russell Baze is the all-time leader with 12,842.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Santa Anita will conduct a 10-race program on a Sunday for the first time this year after canceling Thursday’s eight-race program because of wet conditions.
More than 24 hours of rain led to the cancellation of Thursday’s card more than two hours before first post. At the time of the cancellation, 15 horses had been withdrawn, with others expected to be scratched.
Track officials said Thursday that the canceled races will be brought back. Five of Thursday’s races have been redrawn for Sunday. The program begins at 11:30 a.m. Pacific.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Mark North, a longtime jockey’s agent in California and the Mid-Atlantic region, died Wednesday due to complications of lung disease, according to his friend Alan Sherman.
North was 49. He had been staying with Sherman.
Sherman, an assistant trainer to his father, Art, said Friday that funeral arrangements were being planned.
NEW ORLEANS – Jockey Chantal Sutherland, injured in an accident at Fair Grounds on Jan. 25, will return to her native Canada and begin riding again with the opening of Woodbine on April 21, she said this week at Fair Grounds.
Sutherland fractured her left collarbone and right knee in the accident. Sutherland had surgery Jan. 26 and said she had a plate put in to support the collarbone and another to support the knee.
“I had to be in a wheelchair at first,” she said.
NEW ORLEANS – Trainer Steve Asmussen has a number of top 3-year-olds this year, but had to hit the reset button with two of them, Copper Bullet and Principe Guilherme. Both will miss the Kentucky Derby, but Copper Bullet is back in a regular work pattern here at Fair Grounds, while Principe Guilherme is getting some time off and should be back for the summer.
ARCADIA, Calif. - Instilled Regard, a graded stakes winner at Fair Grounds earlier this year, will start in the Grade 1 Santa Anita Derby on April 7 and will be ridden by Joel Rosario, trainer Jerry Hollendorfer said Friday.
Hollendorfer said Rosario worked Instilled Regard on a trip to California last Sunday. Instilled Regard worked six furlongs in 1:17.80.
“He didn’t work that fast, but he finished good,” Hollendorfer said. “Joel liked him enough to say that he will ride him.”
Instilled Regard, by Arch, has won 2 of 6 starts and earned $244,000.
