Nominations are out for a trio of stakes that mark the first big stakes day of 2018 at Tampa. Those Jan. 20 races, labeled as the Skyway Festival, are the $125,000 Pasco for 3-year-olds and the $125,000 Gasparilla for 3-year-old fillies, both at seven furlongs, and the $50,000 Wayward Lass for fillies and mares at 1 1/16 miles.
The first graded races of the year at Tampa will be run Feb. 10 when the Grade 3 Sam F. Davis Stakes, a Kentucky Derby points event, heads a group of four stakes.
Never in 35 years of riding had Jose Ferrer been injured so badly. A September spill left Ferrer with eight fractured ribs and a collapsed lung, but the jockey has healed with a vengeance.
“I feel better than I ever have,” said Ferrer, 53. “Getting hurt like that, it makes you appreciate what you have. Your eyes are open big.”
ARCADIA, Calif. - McKinzie will have one or two races in preparation for the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs on May 5 after winning his 3-year-old debut in Saturday’s Grade 3 Sham Stakes at Santa Anita.
Trainer Bob Baffert said Sunday that McKinzie will be considered for races at Santa Anita and Oaklawn Park in coming months.
NEW ORLEANS – Just watch Gun Runner get a bath.
Most horses stomp, shift about, shake their heads, offer at least some mild form of protest as they are being bathed outside barns after morning exercise.
Gun Runner, getting the business on a chilly Sunday morning at Fair Grounds, barely budged. The chain on the end of the shank by which he is led around goes over his nose but not through his mouth. There is never a question of Gun Runner acting stupid: He is all class.
ARCADIA, Calif. - It Tiz Well, the winner of the Grade 1 Cotillion Stakes last September and two other stakes, may have run her last race.
Owner Tom Stull said Saturday that It Tiz Well has been diagnosed with a bone chip in an ankle and may be retired. He said a mating with Tapit is under discussion this year.
“She has a few issues,” Stull said. “We’ll see if she races again. She might have to be a broodmare. We’ll get a couple more evaluations.”
Sunday’s featured race at Fair Grounds, race 2, is a Louisiana-bred turf allowance race also open to $35,000 claimers with conditions that are open enough to allow the best statebred grass horses to run.
The field includes the one-two finishers from the $100,000 Louisiana Champions Day Turf, Extra Credit and Fort Pulaski, as well as Grande Basin, whose late rally in the $150,000 Champions Day Classic fell a nose short of the victorious Mobile Bay.
The way the New Orleans road to the Kentucky Derby is starting, Fair Grounds needs to widen the path.
Fifteen were entered Friday for the 74th running of the Grade 3, $200,000 Lecomte Stakes, the featured event among six stakes on the Jan. 13 Road to the Derby Kickoff card.
There are nearly as many entrants as there are Kentucky Derby qualifying points on offer. As part of the Road to the Kentucky Derby program, the Lecomte awards a total of 17 points distributed 10-4-2-1 to the first four finishers.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Yesterday’s News was second in the Grade 1 Starlet Stakes at 1 1/16 miles at Los Alamitos on Dec. 9 in her final start of 2017, a fine conclusion to a season for a filly purchased for $30,000 in May.
For her first start of 2018, Yesterday’s News will run in the Grade 2 Santa Ynez Stakes at seven furlongs on Sunday at Santa Anita. She is sprinting for the first time since July, and trainer Simon Callaghan said she’ll be better going two turns.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Ax Man, the dazzling winner of a maiden race for 3-year-olds at Santa Anita last Monday, is likely to have his stakes debut in the Grade 2 San Vicente Stakes at seven furlongs on Feb. 10.
Trained by Bob Baffert for owners and breeders Hal and Patti Earnhardt, Ax Man led throughout a six-furlong maiden race in his first start and won by 9 1/2 lengths in 1:09.43. He earned a Beyer Speed Figure of 96.
“He ran like he was supposed to run,” Baffert said earlier last week.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Greyvitos, the winner of stakes at Del Mar and Remington Park in the fall, recently underwent surgery to have a bone chip removed from a knee, trainer Adam Kitchingman said on Friday.
Kitchingman said Greyvitos has been given a positive prognosis. The trainer said he is hopeful Greyvitos can return to racing as early as April and run in the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs on May 5.
“We took a little chip out,” Kitchingman said. “It was pretty minor, but it had to be taken out.
