DEL MAR, Calif. – The fair is gone, and now the carnival is about to begin.
Just one week before Del Mar’s summer racing season starts, and a little more than three days since the San Diego County Fair closed its deep fryers and vacated the track’s grounds, Del Mar’s racetrack opened for training Thursday, with the Vann Belvoir-trained pair of Ezio and Red N Black Attack the first to step onto the Polytrack surface shortly after 5 a.m.
Jockey Marcelino Pedroza Jr., injured in a spill last Friday at Ellis Park, had a plate inserted Tuesday to repair multiple fractures in his collarbone and is expected to resume riding in six to eight weeks, said agent Joe Pauley.
His timetable for recovery could allow him to return late in the Ellis Park meet, which ends Sept. 1, or during the early part of the Churchill Downs September meet, which begins shortly thereafter Sept. 4.
Pedroza was injured when his mount, My Belle Etoile, broke down while racing near the lead on the backstretch of last Friday’s fifth race.
Karl Broberg is in the midst of the best year of his young training career. He ranks second in wins in North America with 173 through Tuesday. He captured the biggest race of his life last month when Heitai rolled in the $300,000 Evangeline Downs Turf Sprint. And he’s on pace to shatter the personal-best earnings figure he put up in 2013.
Graded stakes winner Miz Ida, unplaced in three races this year, including most recently July 5 in the Ellis Park Turf, has been retired due to declining form, trainer Steve Margolis said.
A 5-year-old Proud Citizen mare, Miz Ida won a division of the Grade 3 Valley View at Keeneland in 2012 and the Grade 3 Mint Julep Handicap last year at Churchill when racing for her owners and breeders, Richard and Bert Klein.
Her departure, coupled with an injury to Embellishing Bob, the Derby Trial winner, leaves a void at the top level in the Margolis stable.
The 20-year-old jockey Didiel Osorio is riding high at Ellis. Entering Friday’s races, he is tied with the highly regarded apprentice Juan Saez with five winners atop the Ellis Park jockey standings. That puts him ahead of such well-established jockeys as Leandro Goncalves, Jesus Castanon, Miguel Mena, Brian Hernandez Jr., and Calvin Borel.
A native of Panama, where he attended the jockey school there named in honor of Laffit Pincay Jr., Osorio began his apprenticeship in Panama before coming to America as a journeyman rider and as a relative unknown.
A cowboy is expected on the track Saturday at Ellis Park – specifically the 71-year-old jockey R.A. “Cowboy” Jones.
Jones, virtually a yearly fixture at Ellis Park since he began riding there in 1959, is named aboard the first-time starter Texas Holdem in the fifth race Saturday – which would mark his first ride since Aug. 31, when he was fifth aboard Tuffer in a $5,000 claiming race at Ellis Park.
AUBURN, Wash. – Del Rio Harbor tops the list of eight horses nominated for Sunday’s $50,000 Seattle Slew Handicap at Emerald Downs. The four-time stakes winner is certain to attract heavy interest in the betting, yet to prevail in the 1 1/16-mile Seattle Slew, he’ll have to overcome a daunting trend: The past nine favorites have tasted defeat in the meeting’s second two-turn stakes for 3-year-olds.
CYPRESS, Calif. - Doinghardtimeagain, a four-time stakes winner who was last of five in the Desert Stormer Stakes at Santa Anita last month, will start in Saturday’s $200,000 Great Lady M. Stakes at Los Alamitos, trainer Jerry Hollendorfer said.
The Grade 2 Great Lady M. Stakes is run over 6 1/2 furlongs and is the top race for females at the track’s two-week summer meeting for Thoroughbreds.
CYPRESS, Calif. – Shared Belief, the undefeated champion 2-year-old male of 2013, will be based at Golden Gate Fields in Northern California in the buildup to an expected start in the $1 million Pacific Classic at Del Mar on Aug. 24.
The winner of the $500,000 Los Alamitos Derby last Saturday, Shared Belief was shipped to Golden Gate Fields on Monday, according to trainer Jerry Hollendorfer. For much of this year, Shared Belief has trained on the Tapeta Footings synthetic surface at Golden Gate Fields, which Hollendorfer said has been kind to the gelding’s feet.
Typically kept open year-round, Aqueduct’s backstretch will close for seven weeks this summer, something that could save the New York Racing Association $900,000 to $1 million, according to Martin Panza, NYRA’s senior director of racing operations.
The track will close for training Tuesday, and the barn will close July 17. The backstretch will reopen Sept. 2, with the track open for training starting Sept. 3.
Panza said there are about 420 horses at Aqueduct, and 220 of them go to Saratoga, leaving just 200 at Aqueduct. Those horses will move to Belmont Park.
