BALTIMORE – Authentic and Art Collector both were pictures of health Thursday morning at Pimlico, where they’ll go postward Saturday as the clear-cut favorites in the 145th Preakness Stakes, the final leg of the 2020 Triple Crown.
Authentic, winner of the Sept. 5 Kentucky Derby, galloped about a mile and three-quarters with regular exercise rider Beto Gomez aboard. The track was fast after having been sloppy Wednesday morning. No rain is expected through the coming weekend.
The Louisiana Racing Commission on Wednesday voted 9-1 to allow the Louisiana Derby, Fair Grounds Oaks, and their respective preps run in New Orleans to be Lasix-free races.
The “Lasix rules exception” item was one of several taken up during a two-hour emergency meeting in which the agency approved an amended, 84-date meet for hurricane-damaged Delta Downs in Vinton. The meet will now start Nov. 24 and run through April 16.
Bob Baffert had run in the Kentucky Derby 19 times previously, and had won it five times, but the lead-up to this year’s race, he said, felt different. How could it not? The Derby was being run four months after it was originally scheduled, owing to a pandemic, in a city riven by the police killing of a woman in her home months earlier.
“It didn’t feel like the Derby,” Baffert said, “until the gates opened. Then it felt like it. It was on.”
The Gulfstream Park West meet opens Saturday with the first of 40 programs at the home of the old Calder Race Course. The meet closes Nov. 28.
Racing will be conducted Wednesday through Sunday starting next week. Gulfstream Park West also will race on Monday, Oct. 12. No spectators and only a limited number of owners will be allowed to attend the races.
The stakes schedule for the meet consists of just 11 races, each valued at $60,000. Nine of them are on the Nov. 14 Sunshine Millions Preview card.
MIAMI – When trainer Daniel Pita and his father, Manuel, decided in 2018 to purchase a farm in Ocala, Fla., and expand their stable, they never dreamed that within two years they’d have themselves a two-time Florida Sire Stakes winner and potential Breeders’ Cup candidate.
ELMONY, N.Y. – Stan the Man was entered in Saturday’s Grade 3, $200,000 Frank J. De Francis Memorial Dash at Pimlico, but will instead run in the Grade 2, $150,000 Kelso Handicap at Belmont Park, trainer John Terranova said Wednesday.
Stan the Man joins a short field for the Kelso that includes Grade 1 winners Code of Honor and Complexity as well as Endorsed and Mo Don’t No, who will scratch from Friday’s Grade 2 Phoenix at Keeneland to run here.
ELMONT, N.Y. – While trainer Todd Pletcher opted to skip the Preakness, he will still have plenty of action with his 3-year-old division Saturday as he entered a pair in the Grade 1, $250,000 Belmont Derby Invitational. The 1 1/4-mile turf race offers a fees-paid berth into the Breeders’ Cup Turf on Nov. 7 at Keeneland.
No Word finished third behind Domestic Spending and Gufo in the Saratoga Derby, and will look to turn the tables on those two in the Belmont Derby.
ELMONT, N.Y. – While Saturday’s Grade 1, $250,000 Joe Hirsch Stakes has several familiar names in it, there is one stranger in the field who may be worth a look.
Laccario, the Group 1 German Derby winner of 2019, is slated to make his U.S. debut in the Joe Hirsch, a 1 1/2-mile turf stakes that tops a five-stakes program on Saturday’s 10-race Belmont Park card.
ARCADIA, Calif. – A group of jockeys gathered in the paddock garden at Santa Anita on Sunday morning, awaiting their mounts for the next session of workouts. A single subject dominated conversation – new whip rules that take effect this week at California tracks.
The centuries-old style of striking a horse with a full-arm motion was banned earlier this year by the California Horse Racing Board, replaced by rules dictating an underhanded motion and a limit of six strikes in a race.
Jockey Irad Ortiz Jr., the two-time reigning Eclipse Award winner, tested positive for COVID-19 and will not return to action on Sunday as scheduled.
Ortiz has not ridden since Sept. 16 at Kentucky Downs. Since then, he has been on suspension for 10 New York Racing Association racing days (Sept 18 through Oct 3) owing to a pair of careless riding infractions incurred earlier this year.
