The $500,000 West Virginia Breeders’ Classic is one of the most anticipated races of the year at Charles Town, and you certainly don’t want to miss Saturday night’s edition. After all, Russell Road, who will be starting in the race for the seventh straight year, is now 9. How many more years can he possibly hold his form?
As usual, he will face Lucy’s Bob Boy, who will be making his fourth consecutive Breeders’ Classic start.
Victor Carrasco, the leading rider at the Laurel Park summer meet and the Pimlico spring meet, began getting on horses Monday at Laurel Park for the first time since being injured in a spill at Delaware Park on Aug. 25.
Carrasco broke several bones in his right hand when his mount clipped heels and fell.
Carrasco, the Eclipse Award-winning apprentice rider of 2013, is represented by agent Tom Stift.
“I’m feeling good,” Carrasco said Monday. “I got on two horses for Rodney Jenkins this morning.”
Carrasco is named to ride Saturday at Laurel Park.
Laurel Park has a nice-looking card on Friday. Seven of the 10 races have at least 10 horses, and the feature is an optional-claiming race for 2-year-olds at a one-turn mile.
Super high fives will roll all day. There is a $770 carryover into race 1.
The feature has first-level allowance conditions and a $50,000 claiming option. Eight of the dozen 2-year-olds enter off a win at either Laurel, Saratoga, Monmouth Park, Delaware Park, Arlington Park, or Canterbury Park.
The Downs at Albuquerque reported double-digit increases in average daily handle and average daily purses during its 2015 season, which is for Thoroughbreds and Quarter Horses and wrapped up Sept. 27. The track raced 55 days this year, divided between a spring season, from April 17 through June 18, and a fall season, Sept. 11-27.
Handle on Albuquerque’s live races averaged $209,338 a program, an increase of 39 percent over $150,641 in 2014. Purses averaged $176,940 a program, up 18 percent from $149,879 in 2014.
In response to the equine herpesvirus quarantine that will be in place until at least Oct. 29 at Parx Racing, purses are being lowered at the track’s inaugural Fall Festival while the duration of the festival is being extended.
Purses for the festival, which began Aug. 29, had been doubled from approximately $250,000 to $500,000 per day. Parx management and the Pennsylvania Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association have agreed that beginning Sunday, purses will be reduced to $300,000 per day.
MIAMI – Business during the Gulfstream Park summer-fall meet, which ended Saturday, was booming, with all-sources handle up 16 percent over last year’s corresponding meet, according to track officials. Betting on the Florida Sire Stakes, a series of restricted stakes, was up 13 percent compared with 2014, when the series was held at Gulfstream for the first time after many years at Calder Race Course.
Trainer Ralph Nicks and jockey Tyler Gaffalione were crowned champions of the summer-fall meet.
MIAMI – He might not have been quite as big a story as American Pharoah, but there is little doubt that owner and trainer Jerry Bozzo would have been a media darling at Keeneland if he’d followed through on the original plan of running Flutterby in the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint. But in the end, the 94-year-old Bozzo opted to stay at home with his homebred Flutterby, even though competing in the Breeders’ Cup was certainly high on his bucket list.
ELMONT, N.Y. – Artemis Agrotera, the multiple-Grade 1-winning New York-bred filly who has not raced since last year’s Breeders’ Cup, worked a sharp five furlongs in 1:00.43 on Monday over a dull Belmont Park training track.
“That work over that track gives her pretty serious conditioning,” trainer Mike Hushion said.
It was her fifth work and her first at five furlongs since she resumed training this fall after a series of stops and starts during the summer. She has not raced since running seventh in last year’s Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint on Nov. 1 at Santa Anita.
ELMONT, N.Y. – Trainer Jimmy Toner won the inaugural Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Turf with Soaring Softly, who recently died as a result of injuries suffered in a paddock accident at Darby Dan Farm.
Toner is hoping he can get back to the Filly and Mare Turf this year with Recepta, whose dam, Honor Bestowed, is a half-sister to Soaring Softly.
Recepta, a daughter of Speightstown, has won her last two starts, including the Grade 3 Noble Damsel at Belmont on Sept. 19. She began her year with an allowance win at Keeneland, where the Breeders’ Cup will be run.
ELMONT, N.Y. – The six graded stakes races contested last Saturday at Belmont Park were about the near term. A maiden race run after the stakes late Saturday could have significant long-term implications.
In a race rained off the turf and onto the sloppy main track, a 2-year-old colt named Gift Box ran down Matt King Coal by a nose to win a 1 1/16-mile event. It was 18 lengths back to the third-place finisher.
