Apprentice rider Aparna Battula has two fractured vertebrae and will be out indefinitely after a spill Monday afternoon at Indiana Downs.
Battula was on Uptown Sterling for trainer Fred Jackson in the fourth race Monday when she attempted to move her mount off the rail in the six-furlong event and apparently clipped heels with another horse, causing both horse and rider to fall. Battula was taken by ambulance to Major Hospital in Shelbyville, Ind., where she was treated and released.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Maybe it’s the new Win and You’re In designations, or maybe not. Whatever the case, the 2-year-old stakes to be run Saturday night at Churchill Downs elicited the entries of some pretty nice horses.
Eight 2-year-old fillies will try to earn an all-expenses-paid ticket to the Breeders’ Cup when they clash in the Grade 2, $150,000 Pocahontas Stakes, the first of four straight stakes on the Downs After Dark card. Some 35 minutes later, a full lineup of 12 2-year-old colts and geldings will do the same in the Grade 3, $150,000 Iroquois Stakes.
AUBURN, Wash. – Davos, whose promising career was waylaid by injuries, returns from a long layoff to headline Friday’s feature race at Emerald Downs, a $10,000 claimer for older horses at six furlongs. The seven-race card begins at 6:45 p.m. Pacific.
Trainer Burton Sipp has been suspended 180 days by the Thistledown stewards after a random search of his barn by state investigators turned up several syringes and injectibles at Thistledown last Saturday.
The injectibles were vitamins, according to state steward Darrell Parker.
“Mr. Sipp stated that he was taking them to a farm on his way to Mountaineer Park,” Parker said.
Sipp has appealed the suspension and is being allowed to continue to race at Thistledown, as well as Mountaineer Park and Presque Isle Downs.
ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. - A robust-looking Willcox Inn bucked and played as he was inspected by his handlers outside the Arlington barn of trainer Mike Stidham on Wednesday morning, a sign that he came out of his hard-fought win Saturday in the Washington Park Handicap in good order.
That is what Stidham and his crew are seeing, and Willcox Inn, who scored an overdue first victory of 2013 in the Washington Park, is being pointed to a return trip to the Grade 1 Shadwell Mile at Keeneland in October.
POMONA, Calif. – As the California racing landscape nears its 2014 redesign, at least one traditional landmark remains – the Ferris wheel towering high above the five-eighth-mile track that is home to the 2013 Los Angeles County Fair.
Friday is opening day of a 13-day meet renamed the Barretts Race Meet at Fairplex, with a revised past-performance track abbreviation – BSR – which stands for Barretts Sales and Racing. By any name – some still refer to Fairplex Park as “Pomona” – the carnival atmosphere stays.
ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. – This first summer of racing for Holmark Stables has been a good one, and the same can be said for the stable’s trainer, Richie Scherer, who is having one of his best Arlington Park meetings. Saturday, Scherer will saddle She’s Offlee Good for Holmark in the Arlington-Washington Lassie, and the way this season has gone for both trainer and owners, don’t be surprised if the filly proves to be a factor.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – The dilemma of jockeys trying to ride in the rich stakes Saturday at both Kentucky Downs and Churchill Downs when the tracks conduct overlapping programs is being addressed in a familiar way: by air.
Eight jockeys are booked on a charter plane that will originate in Louisville, land at a small airstrip in Tennessee near Kentucky Downs, then return in time for the latter half of the Downs After Dark program at Churchill.
Jockey agent Terry Miller was busy Wednesday with finalizing the logistics of the trip.
BOSSIER CITY, La. – Redgrass Cat and Love Bullet each won her last start, and they are going to get considerable attention in Saturday’s $100,000 Happy Ticket Stakes on the Super Derby undercard. That, however, is where the similarities end between the 2-year-old fillies.
Redgrass Cat, a Kentucky-bred daughter of Bluegrass Cat whom Allen Milligan trains for owner-breeder Paul Rigali Jr., comes into the Happy Ticket after winning the $50,000 Donnie Wilhite Memorial at 7 1/2 furlongs here last month. The victory came in her sixth start and her fourth try on the turf.
