Last year, Robertino Diodoro picked up the richest win of his training career when Broadway Empire dominated the Oklahoma Derby at Remington Park. He’s back again this year, attempting to win the Grade 3, $400,000 race on Sunday.
Diodoro will double-up with Canadian Derby winner Edison and Belmont maiden special weight winner Bay of Biscay.
“Hopefully it will work out,” Diodoro said. “Time will tell, right?”
With reigning two-time champion Groupie Doll retired, the $1 million Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint will have a new winner when the seven-furlong race is run Nov. 1 at Santa Anita.
Artemis Agrotera, Midnight Lucky, and possibly Judy the Beauty appear to be the early favorites for what is shaping up as another fascinating renewal.
There is no hotter horse in the division than Artemis Agrotera, who completed her prep schedule with back-to-back wins in the Ballerina at Saratoga and the Gallant Bloom last weekend at Belmont Park.
ELMONT, N.Y. – Blame it on the Cazanova.
Eric Guillot, the trainer of the speedy Moreno, didn’t love hearing that Big Cazanova, a speedster from Southern California, was shipping across the country to run in Saturday’s $1 million Jockey Club Gold Cup at Belmont Park. Without Big Cazanova in the field, Moreno looked like the potential lone speed in the Grade 1 Jockey Club Gold Cup, the centerpiece of a six-stakes, 11-race card Saturday at Belmont.
With Big Cazanova in the field, a potential early pace battle looms in the 1 1/4-mile race.
ELMONT, N.Y. – It isn’t often you’ll find a 6-year-old at the top of his game entering a Grade 1 stakes in the fall. Trainer Shug McGaughey has two such animals for Saturday’s stakes-laden card at Belmont Park.
McGaughey will send out Imagining in the Grade 1, $600,0000 Joe Hirsch Turf Classic and Abaco in the Grade 1, $600,000 Flower Bowl. Both are offspring of Giant’s Causeway, and both are in excellent form.
As agonizingly close to winning a Triple Crown race as Ahmed Zayat has come is as far away from success he’s realized in the Breeders’ Cup.
Zayat horses have finished second in three Kentucky Derbies, one Preakness, and one Belmont Stakes. In the Breeders’ Cup, Zayat is winless with 20 starters in 17 races. The closest one of his horses has finished is fifth.
“The Breeders’ Cup has been a mess for Zayat stable,” Zayat said this week. “Admittedly, in the early years, I think we were overreaching. We have not performed well.”
The third of five Breeders’ Cup Challenge races for the Grade 1, $1 million Juvenile Turf at Santa Anita on Oct. 31 will be held Saturday at Newmarket. The Group 2 Royal Lodge had 16 eligible runners at the six-day entry stage Monday, while the final field was to have been set by Thursday, according to Mark Dwyer, a representative of the track in England.
With the Breeders’ Cup returning to Santa Anita for the third straight year this fall, there was great anticipation for the 2014 event immediately following last year’s Breeders’ Cup Classic, what with so many of the top contenders remaining in training, like the victorious Mucho Macho Man, runner-up and 3-year-old champion Will Take Charge, and also-rans like Palace Malice, the Belmont Stakes winner, and Game On Dude, the beaten favorite.
Wouldn’t it be something if they all met again the next year?
A somewhat-cloudy picture of the leading North American candidates for the Grade 1, $2 million Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Turf should become clearer Saturday. On separate coasts, two Grade 1 preps are being contested – the Flower Bowl at Belmont and the Rodeo Drive at Santa Anita – that give the winners expenses-paid berths in the race, courtesy of the Breeders’ Cup Challenge Win and You’re In program.
He’s been out of sight and out of mind, but it’s not out of the question that Secret Circle will again be the horse to beat in this year’s Breeders’ Cup Sprint.
Despite not launching his 2013 campaign until three weeks before the Breeders’ Cup and having been idle for 18 months prior to that race, Secret Circle went postward as the 5-2 favorite and rallied to win last year’s Sprint. Secret Circle also has been lightly raced leading up to this year’s Breeders’ Cup, with a second-place finish in the Grade 2 Palos Verdes Stakes on Feb. 2 his only start this year.
Sunset Glow has to be considered the leader among the North American-based horses pointing to the Grade 1, $1 million Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf at Santa Anita on Oct. 31. Trained by Wesley Ward, she is coming off a win in the Grade 1 Del Mar Debutante on Aug. 30, and the way she won the seven-furlong race on Polytrack suggests that she won’t have any trouble stretching out to a mile.
