Peter Miller won his fourth Del Mar summer meet training title last year with 28 wins in the 27-day season.
“I’ll sign up for that right now,” he said.
Miller is wasting no time showing his influence with runners in six of the 10 races on Friday’s opening card of the 31-day season, which runs through Sept. 6.
Mike Maker, well established among American trainers, truly goes nationwide this summer with his first division at the Del Mar summer meeting, which begins Friday and runs through Sept. 6.
Maker, who through Tuesday ranked sixth in the nation with $7.09 million in earnings this year, plans to have 20 to 25 runners at Del Mar, he said Wednesday. His presence gives the Del Mar meeting a much-needed boost of quality horses.
“We thought we’d give it a shot,” Maker said. “This year seemed like a good chance.”
Randy Morse has won graded stakes with top horses such as Jonesboro, Moonshine Mullin, and Morluc – so when he says good things about a 2-year-old named Texas Red Hot, it probably means something.
“He’s as good a horse as I’ve had in a while,” Morse told Ellis Park publicity after the colt closed resolutely to win a Sunday maiden-special at seven furlongs. “I hope he proves it.”
Dazzling stakes winner Big City Lights (by Mr. Big) set the bar high for the California juvenile division. Trained by Luis Mendez, who won the Grade 1 Del Mar Futurity last year with Dr. Schivel, Big City Lights’s 93 Beyer Speed Figure first out, and 85 in the Fasig-Tipton Futurity at Santa Anita, are the highest and third-highest figures by a U.S. juvenile this year.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia – Jockey Amadeo Perez, who Tuesday morning was in the emergency ward at Vancouver General Hospital, said by phone that he was “very sore, but I have no broken bones.”
Perez went down when the horse he was riding on Monday evening at Hastings, Day Pass, inexplicably stumbled and fell during the third race.
People in attendance assumed the injuries were severe. Before being rushed to the hospital, Perez was attended to by first responders for about 45 minutes.
“I am good,” Perez said. “I have no idea when I’ll be back riding, though.”
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Of all the tracks rendered silent in 2020 by the COVID-19 pandemic, Saratoga was where it was felt the most. Picnic tables, typically packed with people, were instead stacked a dozen or so high outside the grounds. The path from the winner’s circle to the jockeys’ room, usually lined with fans or youngsters seeking autographs, was barren. The sight of local favorite Tiz the Law drawing away to win the Travers Stakes by 5 1/2 lengths was not accompanied by what surely would have a raucous celebration.
The Grade 1 Cigar Mile, which will have its purse restored to $750,000, highlights the Aqueduct fall stakes schedule, put out Monday by the New York Racing Association.
The 18-day Aqueduct fall meet runs from Nov. 5 through Dec. 5 and will include 26 stakes totaling $4.9 million in purses.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – While Belmont Stakes winner Essential Quality comes to Saratoga as the leader of the 3-year-old division, he will likely have a few new rivals to beat in order to leave here with that position.
Among the reasons Todd Pletcher will be inducted into racing’s Hall of Fame this summer is his success at Saratoga, where he has been leading trainer 14 times. Among the reasons for his success at Saratoga is his prowess in developing 2-year-olds for early success.
In nine of the last 11 years, Pletcher has won at least 11 races for 2-year-olds at Saratoga, and it’s hard to hold last year’s 4-for-31 performance against him given the impact the COVID-19 pandemic had on getting horses ready.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Rusty Arnold first came to Saratoga in 1982, and has been a regular participant since 1987. In 2019, he had one of his more memorable meets when he won the inaugural Saratoga Oaks with Concrete Rose and the Grade 3 Troy with Leinster.
Last year, he and his wife, Sarah, who works as an assistant, skipped Saratoga owing to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Arnolds, like several Kentucky-based horse people, are excited to be back for this year’s meet, which begins Thursday.
