HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Gulfstream Park will increase gross purses by up to $1 million at the six-month summer meet, which begins April 5, according to a track release.
The track is using incentives to increase field size as one way to boost purses, including 10 percent supplements when there is a minimum of seven starters in two-turn dirt races and eight in off-the-turf races. Also, bonuses will be paid to Florida-breds in open maiden races.
HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – Robert and Lawana Low have won races with five different 3-year-olds this year, and one of them could make a splash on the Kentucky Derby trail Saturday at Oaklawn. The couple owns the undefeated Magnum Moon, who figures to vie for favoritism with Solomini in the Grade 2, $900,000 Rebel.
Good Samaritan is expected to make his 4-year-old debut March 24 at Fair Grounds in the Grade 2, $400,000 New Orleans Handicap.
Good Samaritan has been working steadily this winter at Payson Park in Florida and is ready to get his season rolling, trainer Bill Mott said.
“We’re going to try and get started in there and see where he’s at,” said Mott, who trains Good Samaritan for WinStar Farm and the China Horse Club.
It has been three years since American Pharoah swept the Triple Crown, time enough for him to already have yearlings on the ground. The time since then has made the colt’s majority owner, Ahmed Zayat, all the more appreciative of what he experienced with American Pharoah, including winning the Kentucky Derby after near misses with Bodemeister, Nehro, and Pioneerof the Nile, and has made him long to get to, and win, the Derby again.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Takaful, winner of the Grade 1 Vosburgh last fall, is no longer under consideration for the $2 million Dubai Golden Shaheen, trainer Kiaran McLaughlin said.
Takaful, owned by Sheikh Hamdan’s Shadwell Stables, returned to New York from South Florida last week.
“He needed to be doing 110 percent to go,” McLaughlin said. “We opted not to go.”
Takaful finished third in the Grade 3 Toboggan on Jan. 27 at Aqueduct before shipping to Florida the following week. He worked Feb. 16 at Palm Meadows but has not worked since.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Trainer Al Stall Jr. will have a rare starter at Aqueduct when he runs My Miss Chiff in Saturday’s $100,000 Correction Stakes for older female sprinters going six furlongs.
My Miss Chiff, a Louisiana-bred daughter of Into Mischief, will be just Stall’s second career starter at Aqueduct. In 2014, he ran Central Banker, who finished sixth, in the Grade 1 Carter.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – No people or horses were injured in a pre-dawn fire that destroyed the track kitchen Wednesday at the Palm Beach Downs training center in unincorporated Delray Beach, Fla., according to a fire department report.
Capt. Albert Borroto, a spokesman for Palm Beach County Fire and Rescue, said in a press release that a suspect was arrested and booked on a charge of second-degree arson. Damage to the track kitchen was estimated at $50,000.
Parx Racing may not have any stakes on Saturday, but the card is the Bensalem, Pa., track’s best of the winter and includes six consecutive allowance/optional-claiming races.
Parx has done a good job of maintaining field size this winter. Fields have averaged just more than eight horses per race, according to Sam Elliott, the track’s director of racing.
“We’ve had a lot of cheap racing, not by design but because it’s winter,” Elliott said. “When you make these kind of races, you want to use them to give your guys who have the better horses a shot to run.”
The five stakes at Laurel Park on Saturday feature several compelling matchups, especially in the $100,000 Private Terms, a 1 1/16-mile race for 3-year-olds, and the $75,000 Not For Love, a six-furlong sprint for Maryland-breds.
