HOT SPRINGS., Ark. – Letruska, a South Florida-based runner who has been training at Oaklawn, is scheduled to work for the Grade 1, $1 million Apple Blossom this weekend, trainer Fausto Gutierrez said Tuesday. The Apple Blossom will be run April 17.
The work will be her first since she ran second by a head in the Grade 2 Azeri on March 13 at Oaklawn.
“It will be 21 days [since the Azeri],” Gutierrez said. “She gave a big effort. I want her fresh for this race.”
HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – Brad Cox leads all trainers in stakes wins at the Oaklawn Park meet with six, and he will be out to add to his total over the next three Saturdays, when the track puts on its Racing Festival of the South.
There are eight major stakes to be run over those dates, and the races are worth a cumulative $4.95 million. Cox has horses pointing to at least five of the stakes, led by two-time champion Monomoy Girl in the Grade 1, $1 million Apple Blossom Handicap.
The Racing Festival is a series Cox keys on for a number of different reasons.
Crowds at Santa Anita may be a little larger than expected starting next week. On Tuesday, the state announced less severe pandemic restrictions on outdoor sporting venues in Los Angeles County. As a result, Santa Anita will be allowed grandstand occupancy up to 33 percent starting Monday, compared to the current 20 percent, track officials said.
This Friday, general customers will be admitted at Santa Anita for the first time since March 8, 2020. Since September, the track has allowed owners to attend on days they have runners participating.
In 84 runnings of the Santa Anita Derby, only two jockeys have won the race in three consecutive years – Gary Stevens from 1993 to 1995, and Mike Smith in the last three seasons.
Smith, 55, looked poised for another win in Saturday’s Grade 1 Runhappy Santa Anita Derby on the two-time stakes winner Life Is Good until the colt was sidelined with an injury on March 20.
CYPRESS, Calif. - With victories in the $1.9 million Los Alamitos Two Million Futurity in December and Sunday’s $427,500 Los Alamitos Oaks, the brilliant filly Apollitical Patty is at the top of the 3-year-old Quarter Horse division in California.
She may not defend that role until the fall.
Apollitical Patty, owned by Julianna Hawn Holt of Texas and trained by Monty Arrossa, is a candidate for the All American Derby at Ruidoso Downs, which has trials in August and a final on Sept. 5.
LEXINGTON, Ky. – Dayoutoftheoffice, still unraced since finishing second in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies here last fall, will run in the seven-furlong Eight Belles on the April 30 Kentucky Oaks undercard, assuming she won’t have enough points to make the 14-horse lineup for the Oaks itself, trainer Tim Hamm said this week.
Dayoutoftheoffice, winner of the Grade 1 Frizette in October, has been breezing on a steady basis at Tampa Bay Downs but was not entered in either of the major Oaks preps this weekend, the Ashland or Fantasy.
LEXINGTON, Ky. – Jon Court doesn’t know whether a jockey in his 60s has ever won a Grade 1 race, but if he becomes the first Saturday, he’ll revel in the accomplishment.
“I don’t know who it possibly could have been, if anybody,” Court said this week from his winter base at Oaklawn Park in Arkansas. “It’d sure be a great thing to become the first, I know that.”
LEXINGTON, Ky. – Wesley Ward isn’t looking back, even if something might be gaining on him. The easygoing trainer is aware that other horsemen would love to replicate the success he’s enjoyed at Keeneland, particularly with 2-year-olds, but he plans to just keep doing what he does best.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Despite sending out I Get It to register the most important victory of her career, a half-length decision over favored World Tour in Saturday’s Sanibel Island Stakes, trainer Ron Spatz had to say a sad good-bye to the big horse in his barn earlier this week. I Get It joined trainer Mark Casse’s stable, having been purchased privately by owner Gary Barber following her troubled fourth-place finish (placed third by disqualification) four weeks earlier in the Grade 3 Herecomesthebride.
LEXINGTON, Ky. – Sports fans in the Bluegrass region got accustomed to being very spoiled at this time of year. Not only would the Keeneland spring meet bring an end to the misery of winter, but their beloved Kentucky Wildcats were mainstays in the NCAA Final Four, making four trips in five seasons from 2011 to 2015. The party was always on in early April.
