HENDERSON, Ky. – With nearly 3,900 victories in a training career dating to 1987, Tom Amoss has pretty much done it all.
Amoss has won Grade 1 races at Churchill Downs, Saratoga, Oaklawn Park, and elsewhere, just as he’s won with bottom-level claimers on his main circuits in Louisiana, Kentucky, and Indiana. His all-encompassing reputation, however, hasn’t necessarily included an acuity with 2-year-olds, although that seems to be changing forthwith.
ETOBICOKE, Ontario – Grade 3 Gotham winner Weyburn stands out among the 45 Canadian-bred nominees for the Queen’s Plate on Aug. 22 following an interim payment of $1,500 due June 30.
Weyburn is coming off a neck loss to Mandaloun in the Pegasus Stakes at Monmouth. Chiefswood Stables general manager Robert Landry said the son of Pioneerof the Nile is pointing to the Grade 2 Jim Dandy on July 31 at Saratoga. A strong showing in the 1 1/8-mile dirt race would propel him to the Grade 1 Travers there Aug. 28, instead of the $1 million Plate.
CYPRESS, Calif. - The Fourth of July weekend served as a successful retreat to Los Alamitos for Bob Baffert, his first home base in California when he was a thriving Quarter Horse trainer in the 1980s and early 1990s.
ELMONT, N.Y. -- There will be 47 stakes with purses totaling $11.15 million offered at the 28-day Belmont Park fall meet, the New York Racing Association announced Tuesday. Virtually all races have had their purses restored to 2019 levels after all had severe cuts in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The complexion of the Triple Crown trail will change next year as Oaklawn Park announced Tuesday that the Arkansas Derby will be run five weeks ahead of the Kentucky Derby on April 2 instead of its traditional three weeks out, and that the purse of the Grade 1 race would be boosted from $1 million to a Derby prep-high $1.25 million.
Lone Star Park has carded five stakes races for Saturday. The stakes, which are all restricted, make up the annual Stars of Texas Day.
The 11-race program starts at 2:05 p.m. Central.
Mocito Rojo, a multiple Grade 3 winner coming off back-to-back allowance wins at Louisiana Downs, is scheduled to return to stakes competition July 17 in the $75,000 Good Lord at Ellis Park, said trainer Shane Wilson. The Good Lord is a 6 1/2-furlong race for 3-year-olds and up.
“Mocito had a really sharp work last week,” Wilson said. “We’ve never been to Ellis. That will be a new experience for us.”
The 20-year-old trainer Rylee Grudzien won a stakes for the first time in her career on Saturday with Peacock Kitten, who won the John Henry Stakes at Evangeline Downs under comebacking jockey Devin Magnon.
“It was wonderful,” Grudzien said. “My dad owns a piece of the horse and that was great. Devin rode him. Devin’s my boyfriend, so that was cool. It was kind of a family deal – not a better group of people to do it with.”
Charmaine’s Mia, Going Global and Leggs Galore – fillies and mares who have combined to win a remarkable 10 stakes for trainer Phil D’Amato this year – worked at Santa Anita on Monday for upcoming stakes at the Del Mar summer meeting.
They are bound for races where they figure to be favored, or among the leading candidates.
