OZONE PARK, N.Y. – The rematch will have to wait.
Trainer Rick Violette said Sunday that Withers Stakes winner Samraat most likely will skip the Grade 3, $500,000 Gotham here on March 1 and have just one more race between now and the May 3 Kentucky Derby. Among the options are the Louisiana Derby and Florida Derby – both on March 29 – or the Wood Memorial at Aqueduct on April 5. Samraat, who spent most of the fall at Aqueduct, did win an allowance race over the main track.
Consecutive wins by Sheza Smoke Show has led trainer Peter Eurton to plan a stakes for the 3-year-old filly in April.
Friday, Sheza Smoke Show ($8.80) won an allowance race over a mile on turf by a half-length over Loan Savant. Ridden by Joe Talamo, Sheza Smoke Show was timed in 1:35.17. She beat maidens on the hillside turf course on Jan. 4.
“She keeps doing everything right,” Eurton said. “I’d like to space her races and put some weight on her.”
ARCADIA, Calif. – Ever since his runner-up effort in the CashCall Futurity at Hollywood Park on Dec. 14, everything had gone right for Candy Boy. In fact, his trainer, John Sadler, felt he was ahead of the game in preparation for his next start, the Grade 2, $200,000 Robert Lewis Stakes next Saturday at Santa Anita.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Training hours at Gulfstream Park will get a little more interesting the rest of the winter now that trainer Shug McGaughey has shipped Honor Code down from his Payson Park base to continue preparations for his 3-year-old debut over local soil.
Apropos, who is 3 for 3 at Oaklawn after winning the first stakes race of her career in the $100,000 American Beauty here Jan. 25, will make her next start in the Grade 1, $300,000 Madison at Keeneland, said her trainer, Al Stall Jr. The race is April 12.
“She ran once on Polytrack and ran a really nice race,” Stall said of the synthetic track at Keeneland.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Casiguapo has been out of sight and out of mind since finishing second behind Rise Up in the Grade 3 Delta Jackpot Stakes on Nov. 23. But the runner-up in the 2013 Hopeful is ready to launch his 3-year-old campaign and will try to earn himself a spot back on the Kentucky Derby trail when he takes on eight rivals at Gulfstream Park in Sunday’s first-level optional $75,000 claiming feature at six furlongs.
[ROAD TO THE KENTUCKY DERBY: Prep races, point standings, replays]
HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – The name Holthus has been synonymous with Oaklawn Park for more than 50 years. But since trainer Bob Holthus died in November 2011, it’s been dormant. That is, until this meet.
Bob Holthus’s son Paul has resumed his training career following a long absence, and in December he married the former Nancy Ury, who is the new paddock host at Oaklawn. The couple also have three horses of their own in training, and have gone 3 for 5 with their N P H Stable to rank among the leading owners in Hot Springs.
The career of jockey Jeremy Rose is, in computer lingo, getting a reboot – and at Turfway Park of all places.
Rose, 34, the Eclipse Award-winning apprentice of 2001 who rose to prominence as the regular rider of Preakness and Belmont winner Afleet Alex in 2005, hasn’t experienced the same success in recent years. Beginning in 2010, his mounts, victories, and earnings have continually decreased – with him going 59 for 334 with just more than $2 million in earnings in 2013.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. - Noble Moon, the Jerome Stakes winner who missed three weeks of training due to a foot injury, returned to the track on Thursday and could still make the Grade 3, $500,000 Gotham Stakes here on March 1.
“If everything goes without a hitch, yeah, it’s a possibility,” trainer Leah Gyarmati said Friday.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Trainer Steve Klesaris has had a winter of discontent and it has little to do with the weather.
A quarantine situation at Parx in Pennsylvania due to a case of equine herpesvirus last November prevented his horses from training for two months, disrupting his plans to set up divisions in New York and Florida for the winter.
The quarantine was lifted in early January, but without being able to train, Klesaris has run only two horses since Nov. 8, both at Parx.
