It’s not a New York Showcase Day, but it will feel like one on a Sunday program at Belmont Park that is sprinkled with six statebred races, including three $100,000 stakes to be contested at seven furlongs.
Heading the stakes tripleheader is the Shy Groom, an overnight event that marks the seasonal debut of Saratoga Snacks, whose only loss in five starts last year was a runner-up finish in the Empire Classic.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia – Trainer John Snow is looking for a good effort from Daydream and Havasu Falls in the $50,000 Supernaturel Handicap at Hastings on Monday. The 1 1/16-mile Supernaturel is one of four stakes on the 10-race Canada Day card.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia – Saturday Nite Ride will appreciate the substantially easier company she will be facing when she runs in a first-level allowance race for fillies and mares that will serve as Sunday’s feature at Hastings. The 6 1/2-furlong sprint drew five horses and goes as race 2 on the nine-race card that begins at 1:50 p.m. Pacific.
ETOBICOKE, Ontario—Things have not gone smoothly of late for either Original Script or Strut the Course, but the connections of the two hope they are at their best in Sunday’s $250,000 Bison City Stakes at Woodbine.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. – Gladding starts in a second-level optional $62,500 claimer at Betfair Hollywood Park on Sunday, the sort of race that best suits the two-time stakes winner this year. That is the opinion of his trainer Vann Belvoir, who claimed Gladding at Santa Anita in January.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Eclipse Award-winning trainer Dale Romans will show his support for summer racing at Gulfstream Park by sending in a shipment of horses to stable at the track within the next week.
Romans said he needs time to go over the condition book and work out the logistics of stabling horses in south Florida for the first time during the summer before he puts any horses on a van.
Tampa Bay Downs in Oldsmar, Fla., will run an unprecedented mid-summer card on Sunday to qualify as a year-round live racetrack under the state’s statutes, allowing the track to import simulcast signals without paying another Florida racetrack for the rights.
OCEANPORT, N.J. – Successful Song parlayed a win last year in Monmouth Park’s Lighthouse Stakes into a fast-closing second in the meet’s premier race for fillies and mares, the Grade 2 Molly Pitcher.
Trainer Eddie Plesa Jr. hopes Successful Song can repeat that pattern, starting on Sunday in the $75,000 Lighthouse, a solidly competitive race at 1 1/16 miles.
The Lighthouse marks the comeback of Cash for Clunkers, on the shelf since last September after a pair of blowout losses to division champion Royal Delta.
ETOBICOKE, Ontario – Barring any unexpected defections or surprising additions, a field of 12 Canadian-bred 3-year-olds will start in next Sunday’s Queen’s Plate.
The majority of the participants are expected to work over the weekend, and one of the most-watched moves will come from Up With the Birds and His Race to Win, who are scheduled to breeze in company for trainer Malcolm Pierce.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – The comeback that Dale Romans plans for the second half of 2013 just happens to coincide with the comeback of a filly named Moonwalk.
Romans, the Eclipse Award-winning trainer of 2012, has had a forgettable first half to this year but is optimistic that the ensuing months will be more productive. The end of the 38-day Churchill Downs spring meet Sunday might well be where it all starts when Moonwalk returns from an eight-month layoff in the $54,000 feature, a second-level allowance scheduled for a mile on turf.
