Brad Cox could have the biggest day of his 10-year training career Saturday. Led by Allied Air Raid in the Grade 2, $400,000 Super Derby at Louisiana Downs, he will send out horses in seven stakes among three tracks. It will be Cox’s busiest afternoon since he began training in December 2004.
“To say the least,” said Cox, 35. “Hopefully, it will be a profitable day.”
DEL MAR, Calif. – American Pharoah, the Triple Crown winner, was scheduled to head to Santa Anita early Thursday morning along with the remainder of trainer Bob Baffert’s horses that are still stabled here.
Baffert said he wanted to wait as long as possible to ship American Pharoah, owing to the excessive heat forecast for the area near Santa Anita this week. Temperatures are expected to hover around 100 degrees there all week.
DEL MAR, Calif. – Om, winner of the Del Mar Derby on Sunday, will be pointed to the Grade 2, $200,000 Twilight Derby on Oct. 24 at Santa Anita, according to trainer Dan Hendricks.
The Twilight Derby, like the Del Mar Derby, is at 1 1/8 miles on turf. Hendricks said Om proved he could handle that distance Sunday, but with important races like the Kilroe Mile and Shoemaker Mile on this circuit, he thinks a mile is where Om will be spotted next year at 4.
DEL MAR, Calif. – Trainer Jerry Hollendorfer claimed his first outright title at Del Mar’s summer meeting with 22 wins, two more than Peter Miller, with whom Hollendorfer shared the summer title last year. The Del Mar meeting closed Monday.
“Your goal is to try and do better every meet, and sometimes that works out,” Hollendorfer said. “You can never count on winning the meet title. We worked hard, did a good job, and are lucky to have the horses we have.”
DEL MAR, Calif. – Doug O’Neill won more stakes than any trainer at the Del Mar meeting, and he finished the summer season Monday with a win in the Del Mar Futurity with Nyquist only hours after stablemate Ralis won the Hopeful at Saratoga.
“It doesn’t get much better than that,” O’Neill said Tuesday morning. “It was a tremendous meet. Del Mar’s so unique. The competition is so strong, and you’ve got horses shipping in for stakes. I’m proud of my whole team – the owners, the staff.”
Churchill Downs opens its 11-day September meet Friday with an afternoon card and the likelihood of entries being considerably lighter than at Kentucky Downs, where purses are far higher.
Last September, field size at Churchill averaged 7.7 horses per race (versus 10.1 for Kentucky Downs). Turf racing will be limited at Churchill in deference not only to horsemen’s preferences for Kentucky Downs but also to preserve the course for the fall meet.
FRANKLIN, Ky. – Jockey Florent Geroux was on his way to winning for the fifth time Saturday at Kentucky Downs when race-caller John Lies excitedly asked: “How do you say high five in French?”
The strict translation is haute cinq, but with yet another huge day in the books for Geroux, a 29-year-old native of France, the next question is: How do you say encore in French?
(Trick question: Encore is a French word.)
The first two weeks of the Parx Fall Festival have featured some strong performances, and rapidly approaching is the Sept. 19 highlight of the meet, a five-stakes card topped by the Grade 2 Pennsylvania Derby and Grade 1 Cotillion.
So far, we have seen Social Inclusion score by 11 3/4 lengths in his debut for local trainer Juan Carlos Guerrero in a second-level optional-claiming race. That race should set him up for the $150,000 Bayern Stakes on the Pa. Derby undercard.
Maryland trainer Wayne Potts won his first career training title at Timonium, winning five races at the seven-day meet and defeating Kieron Magee and Kevin Patterson by one winner. The Timonium meet ran from Aug. 28-Sept. 7.
There was a tie in the rider standings with Gerald Almodovar and Travis Dunkelberger each winning seven races.
Maryland racing switches back to Laurel Park on Saturday, when four stakes will be run. The Laurel meet will run three days a week through the end of the year.
DEL MAR, Calif. – Del Mar’s summer meeting ended on Monday showing a gain in overall handle, owing to four more racing days than a year ago, but the year-to-year daily averages for both attendance and handle, especially ontrack, slipped.
That is the second straight year that has happened, so while Joe Harper, the track’s president and chief executive, on Monday said he was “not disappointed” and that the “numbers are almost what we predicted,” he did concede that he and upper-level executives are going to examine all of aspects of the track’s operation.
