INGLEWOOD, Calif. – After mixed results at Belmont Park last weekend, 2012 Breeders’ Cup race winners Calidoscopio and Mizdirection will head to Del Mar later this summer.
Trainer Mike Puype has tentative plans for Calidoscopio, who won the Grade 2 Brooklyn Handicap last Friday, and Mizdirection, who finished fifth in the Grade 1 Just a Game Stakes on Saturday.
Hawthorne Race Course on Tuesday named Allan Plever its racing secretary and director of racing operations.
Plever replaces longtime Hawthorne racing secretary Gary Duch. Duch and Hawthorne parted ways in early May.
Plever, described as a 35-year racing veteran, at one point served as racing secretary at defunct Sportsman’s Park, but his most recent job was as a jockey’s agent in Chicago.
In a Hawthorne news release, Plever suggested he would institute changes in the racing program during Hawthorne’s 2013 fall-winter race meet, which starts in October.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - The Churchill Downs stewards have held jockey Corey Lanerie blameless for his role in the disqualification of his mount, Runkle, from first to third in the eighth race Saturday.
Runkle, trained by Kellyn Gorder, was racing closest to the rail in a tight three-horse duel to the wire in the 4 1/2-furlong race for 2-year-olds when he initiated minor contact with the middle horse, Big Gator. The disqualification allowed Sandbar to “kiss in” as the winner, with Big Gator elevated to second.
After eight stakes last Friday and Saturday, the hits keep on coming Thursday at Belmont Park, with a trio of overnight stakes for the female set.
The $90,000 Lotka, race 3, marks the return of My Happy Face, who has not run since a runner-up finish to Kauai Katie in the Jan. 26 Forward Gal Stakes and makes her first start for trainer Chad Brown.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - If something doesn’t look quite right with the past-performances of a mare named Teroda in the seventh race Thursday at Churchill Downs, well, there’s an explanation.
Teroda was claimed for $62,500 from her last start, at Keeneland on April 6, by Agave Racing Stable and trainer Michelle Lovell after finishing fourth for owner John Stuart and trainer Kellyn Gorder.
In the interim, after a mandatory 30-day period had passed, Stuart bought the mare back from Agave, according to Gorder.
“He wanted her back, and they were willing to sell,” Gorder said.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. – A win by Congenial on Thursday at Betfair Hollywood Park would be the first West Coast win in nearly six years for Midwest trainer Cody Autrey.
Chances are it would not be his last.
Oaklawn Park-based Autrey has relocated his entire stable to California for a six-month stay through fall. Congenial, a gelding by Pulpit, gives Autrey a winning chance in race 6, a second-level optional $62,500 claiming race on the main track. Congenial is expected to set the pace in the 1 1/8-mile race.
ETOBICOKE, Ontario – Woodbine’s Barn 1 was under a voluntary quarantine Tuesday, pending the results of a necropsy on a filly who died in her stall Monday morning.
The body of the horse, an unraced 2-year-old filly trained by Tom O’Keefe, was sent to the nearby University of Guelph’s veterinary clinic.
“Yesterday morning, when I came in, she was just standing in the middle of her stall,” O’Keefe said. “It looked like she hadn’t moved all night, and she hadn’t touched any of her food or water.
MIAMI – R Free Roll was the star of last Saturday’s Summit of Speed Preview show at Calder. A 3-year-old filly by Rockport Harbor, R Free Roll took on the boys in the six-furlong Unbridled Stakes and ran them off their feet, sprinting to a 6 3/4-length triumph while earning a 101 Beyer Speed Figure. Her final time of 1:10.19 was .09 of a second faster than Black Diamond Cat covered the same distance winning the day’s main event, the Ponche for older horses.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – The top would-be challenger to Eclipse champion Royal Delta in the Grade 2 Fleur de Lis Handicap was withdrawn from consideration Tuesday morning when trainer Gary “Red Dog” Hartlage reported that On Fire Baby had been transported to a Lexington equine clinic the previous night after spiking a high fever in her stall at Churchill Downs.
