Santa Catarina, one of the top 3-year-old fillies of 2003, has been retired and sent to Kentucky, where she will be bred to A.P. Indy, trainer Bob Baffert said.
Santa Catarina left Baffert's stable at Santa Anita in mid-January. Owned by Bob and Beverly Lewis, Santa Catarina won 3 of 10 starts and $645,260. Her lone stakes win came in the Grade 2 Hollywood Breeders' Cup Oaks last summer, the next-to-last start of her career. She finished fourth in the American Oaks last July in her final start.
ETOBICOKE, Ontario - The 2004 Canadian graded stakes list, which comprises 38 races, was released Wednesday by the Jockey Club of Canada's Canadian Graded Stakes Committee.
The Selene Stakes, a 1 1/16-mile race for 3-year-old fillies at Woodbine, has been downgraded to Grade 2 status this year. The Selene had been a Grade 1 since the Canadian Graded Stakes Committee announced its first rankings in 1999.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. - Trainer Rene Araya, a regular on the New York circuit for the past 12 years, said the economics of the business have forced him to quit training.
Araya, 60, is down to four horses in his Belmont Park barn and expects to lose those horses by the end of the week. Earlier in the week, eight horses owned by Araya's main client for the past four years, Paul Pompa Jr., were given to other trainers or sent to the farm. Araya said Pat Reynolds received four horses and Gary Sciacca two, and that two horses were shipped to a farm in Ocala, Fla.
The premier stakes horses from the stable of Paul Jones, the two-time defending national champion Quarter Horse trainer, will have horses this weekend in the trials to the Grade 1, $200,000 Los Alamitos Winter Derby and the Grade 1, $200,000 Los Alamitos Winter Championship.
The 10 fastest qualifiers from Friday's four Winter Derby trials will return for the Feb. 27 finals, and the 10 fastest qualifiers from Saturday's two Winter Championship trials will race in the Feb. 28 finals. The trials for both stakes are at 400 yards.
The first Saturday in August will be the biggest racing day of the season at Mountaineer Racetrack.
A program featuring seven stakes, highlighted by the 35th running of the Grade 3, $600,000 West Virginia Derby, is scheduled for Aug. 7. The stakes package on that card will be worth $1.12 million - or more than 40 percent of the $2.64 million stakes schedule for the entire 2004 season.
SUNLAND PARK, N. M. - A record handle figure that had stood for a month was broken Tuesday afternoon at Sunland Park, as the track topped the $2 million mark for the first time in its 45-year history. Over the last three years, the track has found a new winter simulcast market, and handle has risen steadily.
Bets totaled $2,151,368 on Tuesday, crushing the old record of $1,698,255 on Jan. 6. Sunland Park director of racetrack operations Dustin Dix says he believes the best is yet to come.
Quincy Hamilton, the leading apprentice at Sam Houston, made his last weekend at the track count when he won two races Thursday and had double-digit winners Friday and Saturday. He was scheduled to leave for Laurel in Maryland on Sunday.
"I want to get established up there," said Hamilton."I want to win the Eclipse Award, just like everybody else."
Maryland has been a base for a number of Eclipse Award-winning apprentices, including Kent Desormeaux and Chris McCarron.
Jockey Shane Sellers will ride two of the best Louisiana-breds in training Saturday night, when he teams with Spritely Walker in the $200,000 Championship and Zarb's Luck in the $100,000 Sprint on the Louisiana Premier Night program at Delta Downs.
There are 10 races worth at least $50,000 each on the all Louisiana-bred card. Purses for the program total $1 million.
Delta will offer a special pick four starting with race 5. There is a guaranteed pool of $25,000, and payout on the bet is mandatory, said officials with Delta.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. - Good, but not quite good enough. That has been the year-end rap on Medaglia d'Oro the past two years. He has been one of the leaders of his generation for two seasons now, through the Triple Crown grind and his subsequent glory at Saratoga as a 3-year-old in 2002, to the acclaim he received as one of the nation's best older horses in 2003.
