HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Pietro Moran, the Eclipse Award-winning apprentice jockey of 2025, will begin riding at Gulfstream Park on Sunday. He will ride here until Woodbine opens in April.
“Get some experience. Great colony here. Get a lot of experience, meet some trainers and owners and see what happens,” Moran said Thursday.
Moran is named on two horses on Sunday’s card, both for trainer Rachel Halden, a Woodbine-based trainer who winters in South Florida.
Dylan Davis, who suffered multiple injuries including multiple broken ribs as well as having a kidney removed as the result of a spill at Aqueduct on Nov. 14, was scheduled to return to race-riding this weekend at Gulfstream Park.
Davis was named on two horses on Saturday’s 14-race card, including Public Defender in the Grade 3 Honey Fox. He will ride four horses on Sunday. On Friday, Davis was at the Palm Meadows training center, where he breezed five horses, including two on the turf.
Barring a late change of heart, Skippylongstocking, winner of the Grade 1 Pegasus World Cup on Jan. 24, is likely to make his next start in the Grade 1, $300,000 Santa Anita Handicap on March 7, trainer Saffie Joseph Jr. said Friday.
“We’re booked to go to California Sunday. It’s not 100 percent, but that’s where we’re leaning right now. It’s a Grade 1, it makes sense. He’s already won on the track, the timing’s right.”
DELRAY BEACH, Fla. – On the day before he was to find out if he has a Kentucky Derby contender in Jackson Hole, trainer Todd Pletcher on Friday at Palm Beach Downs put two of his more accomplished 3-year-olds through workouts as they prepare for stakes engagements later in March.
There will be 73 stakes worth $23.575 million offered at the extended 2026 Saratoga meet, but two prestigious races that had been run at Saratoga the past five summers will be moved back to Belmont Park this fall.
Plutarch, winner of the Grade 3 Robert Lewis Stakes on Feb. 7 at Santa Anita, is off the Kentucky Derby trail, trainer Bob Baffert said Wednesday afternoon.
Baffert said Plutarch came out of his win “a little body sore. I just backed off him a little bit. He’s very immature. The timing is bad. I need an extra 30 days.”
Baffert said Plutarch will remain with him at Santa Anita and remain in light training.
“He’s still in light training, but I’m not going to make the Derby with him,” Baffert said.
HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – Champion Nitrogen breezed Wednesday at Oaklawn in her first move since winning her 4-year-old debut in the Grade 3 Bayakoa here Feb. 7.
She went a half-mile in 49.60 seconds. The track was fast and the move was what trainer Mark Casse said he was looking for, to “do a little something, but not a lot.”
“She’s doing super,” he said.
Casse said Nitrogen remains on course for the Grade 2, $400,000 Azeri on March 7 at Oaklawn.
HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – Through the years Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert has compiled an outstanding record in 3-year-old stakes at Oaklawn Park, but he will be charting new territory in the local races on Sunday.
The Southern California-based Baffert will be looking to win the Honeybee for the first time when he sends out Explora in the Grade 3, $750,000 race for 3-year-old fillies that shares a card with the Grade 2, $1 million Rebel.
Hey Nay Nay, a two-time stakes winner in 2025 but beaten in his last three stakes starts, is in the midst of a 60-day vacation at a California farm, trainer John Sadler said last weekend.
Hey Nay Nay was a notable absentee from the $102,000 Pasadena Stakes for 3-years-olds at a mile on turf at Santa Anita on Sunday.
“He’s getting a small vacation, a freshening,” Sadler said.
Future Is Now, a four-time graded stakes winner who earned nearly $1 million on turf, is maintaining her regal status in retirement. Co-owner Tracy Mulroy said the Maryland-bred mare is living the good life at Legacy Farm in Beaumont, Va., and will be bred to Constitution this year.
As she prepares for her first breeding season, Future Is Now is currently sharing a field with Call Another Play, another Maryland-bred stakes winner. Mulroy said it’s a peaceful life for the two mares.
“She just seems like a happy girl,” Mulroy said. “Ready to move on to her second career.”
