ETOBICOKE, Ontario – Fury Stakes winner London Tower finished her preparation for Sunday’s $500,000 Woodbine Oaks last Friday with a five-furlong breeze in 1:00.40 on the turf training track.
“It was an excellent work,” trainer Steve Owens said. “We’re pretty excited. She’s had a couple of good works the last couple of weeks.”
ARCADIA, Calif. – Mike Marlow, assistant to trainer Bob Baffert, was home from a full day’s work when American Pharoah walked into the starting gate for the Belmont Stakes on Saturday. Marlow, who heads the stable’s division at Los Alamitos, was settled in his living room, anxious to see if American Pharoah could sweep the Triple Crown.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Trainer Carl O’Callaghan, who won the $2 million Golden Shaheen in Dubai in 2010 with Kinsale King, was suspended by Santa Anita stewards Sunday for failing to appear at a hearing regarding an unpaid debt.
O’Callaghan owes the backstretch supply company Angel’s Feed $10,962.94, according to a ruling.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Warren’s Veneda is likely to start against the two-time champion Beholder in Saturday’s $100,000 Adoration Stakes at Santa Anita, a race not expected to include the recent Grade 1 winner My Sweet Addiction, their trainers said Sunday.
Warren’s Veneda, the winner of three consecutive stakes earlier this year, was third behind My Sweet Addiction in the $294,000 Vanity Stakes on May 9. Beholder missed that race because of illness.
ELMONT, N.Y. – American Pharoah, the Triple Crown winner, came out of his stirring Belmont Stakes victory Saturday in excellent condition, traveled back to Churchill Downs on Sunday for a two-week holiday, and will return to his usual base in Southern California before the remainder of his racing career is mapped out, trainer Bob Baffert said Sunday.
“This horse today, for a horse who ran a mile and a half yesterday, looked pretty darn good,” Baffert said.
Golden Gate Fields’s leading apprentice rider David Lopez bruised the left side of his lower back and right ankle in a fall after his mount in the 10th race, Redneck Girl, ducked in sharply shortly after the start of the race.
Lopez was taken to Highland Hospital in Oakland for precautionary X-rays.
ELMONT, N.Y. – Protonico, a multiple graded stakes winner, became the latest horse to be impacted by a virus running through trainer Todd Pletcher’s barn and was removed from consideration for next Saturday’s Grade 1 Stephen Foster Handicap at Churchill Downs.
Protonico, 4, had won the Grade 2 Alysheba Stakes at Churchill in his last start and the Grade 3 Ben Ali at Keeneland before that.
Cliff Berry’s talent, work ethic, professionalism, and honesty have helped him notch more than 20 riding titles in Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas during his 35 years in the saddle. But come December, the 52-year-old journeyman plans to call it a career. Berry presently is riding at Lone Star Park near Dallas, and when the meet ends in July, he will head to his home track of Remington Park in Oklahoma City.
“I’m thinking about retiring after Remington,” Berry said. “That’s what my plan is right now.”
ELMONT, N.Y. – Conspicuous by his absence from Saturday’s Grade 1 Manhattan at Belmont Park was Imagining, who was held out of that race to point for the Grade 1 United Nations at Monmouth Park on July 5.
Though Imagining has won several races at Belmont, including the Grade 1 Man o’ War in 2014, trainer Shug McGaughey said the horse is better on turf courses with tighter turns.
“He ran second at Hollywood, he’s run good at Gulfstream, he’s run good at Aqueduct,” McGaughey said. “I also think he likes a little time between his races.”
ELMONT, N.Y. – Michael de Kock has been an extremely successful trainer in South Africa and Dubai, and he’s strongly considering opening up a stable in North America in the next few years.
“It could be on the radar,” de Kock said Friday at Belmont Park, where he was to run Mubtaahij in the $1.5 million Belmont Stakes on Saturday. “We’re looking at it. I enjoy the racing here. I think there’s lot of opportunities at different tracks. There’s turf, there’s dirt, there’s a lot of opportunities for horses.
