Age 11 is not too late for a racehorse’s renaissance.
From 2017 through 2020, Mongol Bull managed only two wins. Thursday at Arlington, the 11-year-old gelding won his third race in a row, easily beating a bunch of $5,000 claimers. Mongol Bull began his streak in a $10,000 claimer at Hawthorne this past spring and then won a $5,000 claimer at the Arlington meet before repeating on Thursday.
Visually and on Beyer Speed Figures, Army Wife is getting better and better as her 3-year-old season unfolds. A distant third in the April 3 Gazelle, where she got an 82 Beyer, Army Wife went on to win the May 13 Black-Eyed Susan at Pimlico with an 86 Beyer before dominating the Iowa Oaks at Prairie Meadows on July 2.
Army Wife stalked the pace, always traveling comfortably under Joel Rosario, and easily drew away to score by 3 3/4 lengths, notching a career-best 90 Beyer in the 1 1/16-mile contest.
Just as Stilleto Boy has found the best form of his career, his trainer and part-owner, Doug Anderson, is probably losing the gelding.
Anderson on Friday was hauling a horse van with Stilleto Boy aboard from Iowa to Kentucky, where Stilleto Boy will be sold Monday at Fasig-Tipton’s horses of racing age sale July 12.
Stilleto Boy won the Iowa Derby at Prairie Meadows last Friday by more than four lengths, earning a career-best 95 Beyer Speed Figure.
The fastest 2-year-old at Del Mar last summer will try to make history this summer – Dr. Schivel would be the first horse to win both of the track’s prestigious Grade 1 sprints, the Del Mar Futurity and Bing Crosby Stakes for older.
Dr. Schivel will aim to the Bing Crosby on July 31, a race won by stablemate Collusion Illusion last year.
Hidden Stash has been sidelined indefinitely after undergoing surgery shortly after his most recent work June 21 at Keeneland.
Trainer Vicki Oliver said Hidden Stash “had the start of a condylar fracture” in a cannon bone, necessitating insertion of one screw at the affected site to facilitate healing.
“The surgery went great and he started hand-walking back at the barn” on Wednesday, said Oliver. “We’re hoping to have him back racing in the fall.”
HENDERSON, Ky. – Rudy Brisset didn’t bother applying for stalls at Saratoga this summer, even knowing he’d probably have a few horses to run.
“We’ll ship and run from here,” Brisset said this week by phone from his farm in Versailles, Ky. “It just worked out that way this year.”
HENDERSON, Ky. – Mr. Wireless will be pointed to the $500,000 West Virginia Derby on Aug. 7 at Mountaineer Park following his breakthrough victory Wednesday in the Indiana Derby at Indiana Grand.
“I call it the Mr. Money route,” said trainer Bret Calhoun, who has left a string of horses at Ellis Park with his longtime assistant Dennis “Peaches” Geier. “It’s good timing, a good purse, a good next spot.”
Knicks Go will make his next start in the $1 million Whitney Stakes on Aug. 7 at Saratoga and may have the Breeders’ Cup Classic as a late-season goal in 2021.
Trainer Brad Cox said Thursday that Knicks Go had come out of his powerhouse win July 2 in the Prairie Meadows Cornhusker Handicap in excellent condition, and now the horse’s connections are looking toward the second half of the season.
“He’s going to train at Ellis Park,” Cox said. “Looks very good out of the race. Went back to the track, galloping, seems fantastic.”
Jockey Drayden Van Dyke is coming home. The personable 26-year-old will return from Kentucky next week to restart his California career at the Del Mar summer meet, which begins next Friday.
The 2014 Eclipse Award winner as the nation’s outstanding apprentice and the leader at the 2018 Del Mar summer and fall meets, Van Dyke spent this spring and early summer on the Kentucky circuit. From late March through early July, Van Dyke won nine races from 100 mounts.
