Beholder, the champion 2-year-old filly of 2012 and 3-year-old filly of 2013, is a notable absentee from Saturday’s $200,000 Bayakoa Stakes at Los Alamitos. It will not be long before she is back in trainer Richard Mandella’s Santa Anita stable.
Mandella said last weekend that Beholder is two weeks away from being sent to a layup facility operated by Julie Adair-Stack to begin early training for a comeback. She is likely to spend a few weeks there before being sent to Santa Anita.
Apprentice jockey Alexandra Jara remained hospitalized Thursday due to injuries suffered in a spill Wednesday at Aqueduct.
Jara broke her collarbone and had some bleeding on her spleen, according to her brother, Fernando Jara, also a rider on this circuit. She also had a bruise on her hip.
Fernando Jara said the bleeding on Alexandra Jara’s spleen had subsided to the point where doctors were confident “she’s going to be fine.”
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Between winning re-election as president of the New York Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association and verbally sparring with Bobby Flay over Lasix at a recent New York Racing Association board meeting, trainer Rick Violette has found time to do what he truly prefers – win races.
Violette has been on quite a roll as of late, winning with five debuting juveniles in the last month, perhaps setting the stage for a bright 2015 in which he already has the multiple Grade 1 stakes-placed colt Upstart for possible Triple Crown prep races.
California Chrome resumed training at Los Alamitos on Thursday, five days after the 2014 Kentucky Derby winner got his fourth Grade 1 win of the year in the $300,000 Hollywood Derby at Del Mar, the eighth stakes win of his career.
Trainer Art Sherman has his sights set on a ninth stakes win. Sherman said Thursday that California Chrome is likely to make his 2015 debut in the $500,000 San Antonio Stakes for older horses over 1 1/8 miles on dirt at Santa Anita on Feb. 7.
“We’ll probably go in the San Antonio,” Sherman said.
It has been decades since trainer Tom Swearingen sent a string to Oaklawn Park, but Swearingen will have a dozen horses stabled there this winter, including the very talented Illinois-bred 3-year-old I Got It All. But before shipping out of Chicago, I Got It All starts Saturday at Hawthorne in the Lightning Jet Handicap for Illinois-breds, a six-furlong dash with an estimated $75,000 purse.
Mister Marti Gras turns 8 in less than a month, but the gelding is not showing his age. Mister Marti Gras ran his typical graded stakes-caliber race last weekend at Hawthorne, finishing second in the Grade 2, $250,000 Gold Cup for the second year in a row.
With better luck, Mister Marti Gras – fourth in the 2011 and 2012 Gold Cup – might have won this race, but he had a poor outside draw and rallied from the back of the field and wide over an inside-speed-favoring surface that helped propel Red Rifle to victory.
Since mid-April, the 4-year-old filly Legacy has run in six consecutive stakes with mixed results.
She won the Cypress Stakes at Los Alamitos in July and was second in the Las Madrinas Stakes there in September. In between those races, she finished sixth in the Tranquility Lake Stakes on Polytrack at Del Mar in August and was most recently eighth in the Grade 2 Goldikova Stakes on turf at Santa Anita on Nov. 2.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Claiming horses may be the focus of attention on opening day, but the popular Claiming Crown is only a prelude to what promises to be another star-studded winter season that begins Saturday at Gulfstream Park.
:: CLAIMING CROWN: Get PPs, watch Saturday's Gulfstream Park card live
