LOUISVILLE, Ky. – As always, racing fans can hold onto some indelible memories from the final week of the fall meet as stables begin leaving Churchill Downs for the winter.
A flurry of notable events took place here during the last few days of action, including victories by Carina Mia and Airoforce in the twin 2-year-old stakes Saturday, the Grade 2 Golden Rod and the Grade 2 Kentucky Jockey Club.
STICKNEY, Ill. – Commissioner ended his career Saturday with a 2 1/2-length win in the Hawthorne Gold Cup, and the next day was shipped directly to WinStar Farm in Kentucky to begin a stud career, but for the winners of the two undercard stakes Saturday at Hawthorne, Recount and Puntsville, racing life goes on.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – The mass exodus of this circuit’s top horses and horsemen was well under way Sunday and Monday as planes, vans, and automobiles were being loaded and directed south for the winter.
The good news is many of those same horses – and horsemen – will be headed back here in a few months, including Tonalist, Saturday’s Grade 1 Cigar Mile winner who will have a 5-year-old campaign in 2016.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Mohaymen, winner of Saturday’s Grade 2 Remsen at Aqueduct, was flown Sunday to south Florida and likely will target the Grade 2, $350,000 Holy Bull Stakes at Gulfstream Park on Jan. 30 for his 3-year-old debut, said trainer Kiaran McLaughlin.
McLaughlin said Mohaymen, who went 3 for 3 as a 2-year-old, could have two or three preps before a start May 7 in the Kentucky Derby.
CYPRESS, Calif. – The key to the Los Alamitos winter meeting can be measured by a single-digit number.
For the 12-day season that begins Thursday, a vital sign of the season’s success or failure will be the number of runners per race. The more starters there are – the more interest there will be from race bettors and the higher the handle will be.
“As all our meets do, it will rise and fall on our field size and how well our races are supported,” said Brad McKinzie, the general manager of the track’s Thoroughbred meetings.
DEL MAR, Calif. – There seemed little hope in 2013 that a chestnut yearling owned by Glen Hill Farm would have much of a future. He had suffered a spinal cord injury so severe that his survival was in jeopardy.
“We don’t know what he did,” said Craig Bernick, the president and CEO of Glen Hill Farm. “It was 50-50 on whether we would have to put him down.”
It took months of veterinary treatment before the yearling showed progress. When it came time to name the gelding, the Glen Hill team went with Chiropractor to reflect what he had been through.
Trainer Phil D’Amato scratched Coppa from the Grade 3 Jimmy Durante Stakes at Del Mar on Saturday and will point her to the $300,000 Starlet Stakes at Los Alamitos on Dec. 12. D'Amato also plans to run the stakes-placed filly Street Fancy in the Starlet.
On Sunday, D’Amato said he opted to scratch Coppa from the Durante, run at a mile on turf, and point her for a race on dirt, the surface over which she trains.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – For the third straight year, trainer Kiaran McLaughlin can leave New York in the fall following the Remsen Stakes at Aqueduct, head to south Florida for the winter, and dream about Kentucky in the spring.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Christophe Clement was a man on the move well before sunrise Sunday, checking in on his stable at Belmont Park and working a few horses before catching an 8:30 a.m. flight to Southern California, where he hoped to cap a terrific weekend with another Grade 1 victory in the Matriarch at Del Mar.
On a chilly morning, Clement still was basking in his 1-2 finish Saturday in the Grade 1 Cigar Mile at Aqueduct, where Tonalist kicked home strong in the final quarter-mile to outfinish Red Vine and win by a neck.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Once a jockey establishes himself in New York, the rider typically heads south for the winter. Not so in the case of Irad Ortiz Jr., who will be based at Aqueduct for the winter, though he is likely to make several trips to Gulfstream Park.
Ortiz, who will be this circuit’s leading rider for the second straight year, plans to spend most of his winter at Aqueduct riding the inner track, which opens Dec. 9. Gulfstream Park’s meet opens Dec. 5.
