DEL MAR, Calif. – Richard Mandella thought Jolie Olimpica was training as though she was sitting on a big race in the Grade 1 Matriarch on Sunday at Del Mar, but a foot bruise this week caused her to not even be entered.
“She’s dead lame,” Mandella said. “She’s got an abscess coming. Another setback.”
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DEL MAR, Calif. – Game on.
Astute will take on Princess Noor in a battle of the two best 2-year-old fillies on the West Coast in the Grade 1, $300,000 Starlet at Los Alamitos next Saturday.
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Astute will be coming back just 21 days after her victory in the Desi Arnaz here at Del Mar, but she signaled her readiness for the 1 1/16-mile Starlet with a half-mile work in 46 seconds Friday morning at Del Mar.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Kenny McPeek ran Envoutante against his likely Eclipse champion Swiss Skydiver one time. That was in the Grade 1 Alabama in mid-August, when Swiss Skydiver won easily and Envoutante was fourth by 11 lengths.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – A sizable Single 6 pool that would have made for an inviting closing-day target for thousands of Churchill Downs bettors Sunday was instead emptied by a Thanksgiving windfall for one remarkably lucky person.
An unidentified man playing online in California hit for a whopping $328,146 on Thursday by using a mere $2 worth of random picks in the Single 6. The winning combination of 6-5-9-3-1-4 was among one of his singular selections at a 20-cent increment.
ETOBICOKE, Ontario - After a last-ditch effort to try to salvage the final three weeks of the meet, Woodbine Entertainment announced Thursday that the remainder of the Woodbine meet has been canceled.
The Ontario government put Toronto into a grey lockdown phase this week to try to curtail a spike in coronavirus cases. Included among the restrictions was no horse racing, but training has been allowed to continue. Racing industry representatives were unable to convince government officials to allow Woodbine to finish out the meet.
MIAMI – Trainer Ron Spatz said he really didn’t give it much thought that Saturday’s third race will be the final feature race ever run at the old Calder Race Course when he entered I Get It in the $46,000 allowance test, carded at 1 1/16 miles on the grass. He was just happy for the opportunity to start his promising 2-year-old filly one more time before heading into the Gulfstream Park championship meet this winter.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Money Moves, who likely would have vied for favoritism, will miss Saturday’s Grade 3, $100,000 Discovery Stakes due to an unspecified problem, trainer Todd Pletcher said Wednesday.
Pletcher said he has sent X-rays to Dr. Larry Bramlage to decipher the issue.
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With Money Moves out, there were only five 3-year-olds entered in the Discovery, among the last route stakes restricted to 3-year-olds in 2020.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Drafted, who began his career in the U.S. but who developed into a multiple group stakes winner in Dubai, is back in the U.S. and will return to the races in Sunday’s Grade 3, $100,000 Fall Highweight Handicap at Aqueduct.
The traditional Thanksgiving Day feature, the Fall Highweight was moved this year to accommodate a NYRA schedule that no longer includes live racing on Thanksgiving Day.
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OZONE PARK, N.Y. – The cancellation of turf racing at Churchill Downs helped in part flood the entry box for Saturday’s Grade 3, $100,000 Long Island Stakes at Aqueduct, with 13 entered for the 1 3/8-mile event, scheduled for the inner turf course. The field will be limited to 12 starters.
Kentucky shippers English Affair, With Dignity, Delta’s Kingdom, and Siberian Iris spice up the final graded turf stakes of the year in New York.
