ELMONT, N.Y. - As a native New Yorker who has been attending races at Aqueduct and Belmont for nearly three decades, owner Mike Repole has made no bones about his desire to win the Belmont Stakes.
“This is the race I want to win, this is the race for 30 years I dreamt of winning,” Repole said.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – The Friday happy hour at Churchill Downs officially begins at 4 p.m. Eastern, after three races already have been run on an 11-race twilight program.
It just so happens the fourth race this particular Friday is the feature, a $60,000 allowance race that drew an exceptional group of filly and mare turf sprinters, led by Sweet Cassiopeia and Good Deed.
Steve Margolis, who trains Good Deed for Bert, Elaine, and Richard Klein, is hoping a repeat victory will make him the happiest man of happy hour.
ELMONT, N.Y. - Shanghai Bobby, last year’s 2-year-old champion male sidelined since the Florida Derby because of injury, returned to trainer Todd Pletcher’s Saratoga barn on May 31 and was to begin walking under tack on Thursday.
Shanghai Bobby was found to have a pelvic stress fracture following his fifth-place finish in the Florida Derby on March 30 and spent two months at the Payton training center in Ocala, Fla.
Trainer Delbert Rycroft died from unknown causes either late Sunday evening or early Monday morning. The former jockey was discovered in his hotel room Monday at the North Burnaby Inn by jockey Scott Williams.
Rycroft, 62, began his riding career in Alberta where he won the Grade 3 Canadian Derby at Northlands Park when he was an apprentice in 1971. He was well known at Hastings, then called Exhibition Park, for riding tough horses that others riders refused to ride. Between 1976 and 1991 he won over 600 races in Vancouver.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. – Interaction, the winner of the Grade 2 San Juan Capistrano Handicap at Santa Anita in April, and Strong Suit, a four-time stakes winner in England, have been retired to stud, their trainers said on Wednesday.
Interaction was nominated for Saturday’s $200,000 Charles Whittingham Handicap at Betfair Hollywood Park but has been retired because of an ankle injury, trainer Ron McAnally said. The injury was detected in late May after Interaction resumed workouts following the San Juan Capistrano.
OCEANPORT, N.J. – Trainer Eddie Plesa Jr. holds strong hands in the $44,000 second-level co-features for filly and mare sprinters on Friday at Monmouth Park.
Plesa sends out Angel Dreams in the main track contest at six furlongs with an optional claiming price for $32,000. One race later, Plesa has Slew’s Exchange in the five-furlong turf dash, an optional event for $40,000 claimers.
The first stakes at Northlands Park this year goes Friday night and it is a good one, with Jaws n’ Paws trying to win her fourth straight race and third stakes in a row in the $50,000 Wild Rose Handicap for fillies and mares. Standing directly in her way in the six-furlong sprint is the multiple stakes winner Claresmiezie, who couldn’t have looked any better winning an optional $35,000 claiming race by 6 1/4 lengths here May 17.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia – Trainer John Snow is looking forward to running Wilo Kat in the $50,000 Sir Winston Churchill at Hastings on Sunday. The mile and a sixteenth Churchill, for 3-year-olds and up, anchors the four stakes races that will make up half of the eight-race card.
ELMONT, N.Y. – Mr. Commons is far and away the class of the field in Friday’s $150,000 Jaipur Stakes at Belmont Park, having competed almost exclusively in Grade 1 and Grade 2 races since first gaining national attention with his third-place finish in the 2011 Santa Anita Derby.
But Mr. Commons has not won a race in 16 months, a drought trainer John Shirreffs hopes to end Friday by dropping his turf specialist into the Grade 3 Jaipur.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Dallas Stewart is back at the table. After a few years between proverbial drinks, Stewart is in the Triple Crown discussion again, this time with a colt he believes is coming into the Belmont Stakes in terrific shape.
Golden Soul, runner-up in the May 4 Kentucky Derby, was purposely held out of the Preakness by Stewart to await the 145th Belmont on Saturday.
