HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – Spelling Again and Cinnamon Spice, who both have ties to Oaklawn Park, could meet next month at Keeneland in the Grade 1, $300,000 Madison. The seven-furlong race for fillies and mares will be run April 9.
Spelling Again, the winner of last year’s Grade 2 Chilukki at Churchill Downs, is in training at Oaklawn with Brad Cox. Cinnamon Spice shipped from her Fair Grounds base to win a recent Oaklawn allowance for trainer Larry Jones.
Brian Schweda, who played defensive end on the first New Orleans Saints football team, is on the best run of his career as a trainer.
Schweda, 72, has won with 6 of 15 starters this month, with the victories split between Fair Grounds and Delta Downs.
On March 5 at Fair Grounds, Schweda won two races, including a 10 3/4-length victory by the gelding Greeley’s Wish in a maiden race for 3-year-old Louisiana-breds. Schweda owns Greeley’s Wish, who ran six furlongs in 1:10.71.
Racing for the first time in seven months, Zipessa ran away with a first-level optional $40,000 claiming turf race Monday at Fair Grounds, and trainer Mike Stidham said he’s looking for a stakes race for her.
“We’ll nominate her to the Jenny Wiley,” Stidham said after Zipessa led all the way Monday. She ran about a mile in 1:37.93 to win by 5 1/4 lengths. The Grade 1 Jenny Wiley is a 1 1/16-mile turf race for older females April 16 at Keeneland.
Trainer Todd Pletcher, who has won the Louisiana Derby three times, will be shipping Battery from Palm Beach Downs for this year’s race next Saturday at Fair Grounds.
A son of Bernardini and the Saint Ballado mare Flawless Diamond, Battery has won 2 of 4 starts, all around two turns. He’s coming off a first-level optional $75,000 claiming victory at 1 1/8 miles on Feb. 10 at Gulfstream Park in his second start as a 3-year-old.
“He’s definitely a two-turn horse,” Pletcher said. “He’s already won at a mile and an eighth. We didn’t want to back up.”
NEW ORLEANS – Distance was the reason that trainer Mark Casse chose the 1 1/8-mile Louisiana Derby over the 1 1/16-mile Rebel Stakes for Conquest Windycity.
“I wanted the extra ground,” Casse said of the Grade 2, $1 million Louisiana Derby, to be run next Saturday at Fair Grounds. Conquest Windycity will be shipped here from Oaklawn Park, where the Grade 2, $900,000 Rebel will be run this Saturday.
Last year’s Santa Anita Derby winner, Dortmund, has been turned out at a layup facility a few miles from Santa Anita, trainer Bob Baffert said Thursday.
Baffert said he was not happy with the way Dortmund had been training in recent weeks and finally decided that the best course of action was not merely to stop on him but to also get him away from the track and let him rest up.
Smokey Image and Uncle Lino, who were fifth and fourth in the San Felipe Stakes last Saturday, will try again against one-two-three finishers Danzing Candy, Mor Spirit, and Exaggerator in the Grade 1, $1 million Santa Anita Derby on April 9, their trainers said Thursday.
ARCADIA, Calif. – There has been some thought about retiring Velvet Mesquite and breeding her this spring, but at age 6, she is back in good form, and she’s never better than when on Santa Anita’s hillside turf course.
Velvet Mesquite is a six-time winner on the tricky downhill course, and she’ll go for her seventh on Saturday in the $100,000 Irish O’Brien, for California-bred females at about 6 1/2 furlongs.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – While trainer Kiaran McLaughlin is hoping Clothes Fall Off can get her first stakes win in Saturday’s $125,000 Correction at Aqueduct, he is eyeing bigger prizes for two of his stakes-winning filly-and-mare sprinters.
Cavorting, the winner of the Grade 1 Test last summer, is working toward the Grade 1 Madison at Keeneland on April 9. Cavorting, third as the favorite in the Grade 1 La Brea at Santa Anita on Dec. 26, has breezed three times at Palm Meadows.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Effinex, who finished third as the favorite in the Grade 1 Santa Anita Handicap last Saturday, arrived back in New York on Wednesday following a cross-country flight from Southern California.
Steve Moyer, assistant to trainer Jimmy Jerkens, said the race and the trip “took a little toll” on Effinex, who hadn’t run since winning the Grade 1 Clark Handicap last November. Moyer did say that Effinex was “completely clear” of the hives that plagued him leading into the Santa Anita Handicap.
