Plans for Pauline’s Pearl, who won the Grade 3, $300,000 Houston Ladies Classic for the second year in a row Saturday at Sam Houston Race Park, are to be determined, trainer Steve Asmussen said Sunday.
The race for fillies and mares was the richest offering during the Houston Racing Festival program of five stakes worth a total of $800,000.
Scarlet Fusion has some upcoming stakes options at Gulfstream Park after his career performance Saturday in the Grade 3, $200,000 John B. Connally Turf Cup at Sam Houston Race Park.
Scarlet Fusion won over 1 1/2 miles in the Connally, which was part of the Houston Racing Festival. He rallied for a three-quarter-length victory and earned a career-high Beyer Speed Figure of 96.
Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore will run nine stakes races on May 20, the day of the Preakness Stakes, the track announced Tuesday, and hold another six stakes, including the Black-Eyed Susan, on the day prior.
The 15 stakes will have total purses of $3.5 million, including $1.5 million for the Grade 1 Preakness Stakes, the middle leg of the Triple Crown. On the same day of the Preakness, Pimlico will hold eight other stakes, four of them Grade 3 races – the $200,000 Dinner Party, the $200,000 Chick Lang, the $100,000 Gallorette, and the $100,000 Maryland Sprint Stakes.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Hours before leaving the winner’s circle triumphantly here Saturday following Art Collector’s impressive victory in the $3 million Pegasus World Cup Invitational, Hall of Fame trainer Bill Mott was scratching his head in consternation following the inexplicably dull performance turned in by his odds-on favorite Obligatory in the Grade 2 Inside Information.
While things didn’t go great for trainer Brad Cox this past weekend in Florida, where Cyberknife wrapped up his racing career with a sixth-place finish as the 2-1 favorite in the Pegasus World Cup, the Fair Grounds wing of the stable did just fine. Cox ran four horses last racing week in New Orleans, and all of them won.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Gufo, a divisional turf standout in each of his last three seasons of racing, was sent through his first workout in several months when breezing an easy three furlongs Sunday at trainer Christophe Clement’s winter base of Payson Park.
Gufo, a 6-year-old horse by Declaration of War, could return to action at Gulfstream Park in the Pan American on April 1, the same Grade 2 race that kicked off a 2022 campaign in which he earned $938,020 from seven starts for his owner, Otter Bend Stables. In all, Gufo has won nearly $2.2 million from 21 races.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Luis Carvajal Jr., best known as the trainer of the standout sprinter Imperial Hint, has disbanded his stable at Tampa Bay Downs and is now working in the Gulfstream Park racing office.
Carvajal, a 50-year-old native of Chile, ran his last starter Jan. 8 at Tampa. He said the recent dispersal of the racing stock of one of his main owners, Patricia Generazio, was a catalyst in his career switch.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Even with his name sitting atop the Gulfstream Park championship-meet trainer standings, Saffie Joseph Jr. is acutely aware of how humbling the sport of racing can be.
All three Joseph horses finished far behind the victorious Art Collector in the Pegasus World Cup on Saturday. Skippylongstocking was seventh at 9-1, White Abarrio was eighth at 6-1, and O’Connor was 11th at 25-1 in a 12-horse field.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Mind your manners.
That was the message veteran jockey’s agent Craig O’Bryan imparted to Juan Hernandez, the rider he represents, in the days before the start of the current Santa Anita winter-spring meeting on Dec. 26.
“Don’t get days,” O’Bryan told his rider. “We’re loaded.”
“It looks like it worked out,” Hernandez said.
Even the boldest prediction could not have guessed the level of Hernandez’s success in the first month of the season. Through Sunday, Hernandez had 27 wins, far clear of Edwin Maldonado, who is second with nine wins.
