MUSKEGON, Mich. - Great Lakes Downs has a pair of $45,000 stakes for 2-year-olds this week, the Temptress Stakes for the fillies on Friday and The Little Ones Stakes for colts and geldings on Saturday. They are Great Lakes's first stakes races of the year for 2-year-olds
COLUMBUS, Neb. - Dennis Collins on Saturday became the first jockey to post a four-win night at this meet. He and leading rider Armando Martinez combined to win the first six races of Saturday's eight-race card.
Collins got his first win of the night in the second, via disqualification. The 3-5 favorite Southern Okie, with Collins aboard, went to challenge pacesetting Halo's Heartbreak through the far turn. Ridden by Terry McGee, Halo's Heartbreak drifted out badly into the stretch, carrying Southern Okie beyond midtrack, and then beat Southern Okie by a neck.
COLLINSVILLE, Ill. - Jockey Chris Quinn, who had been comatose as ta result of a spill at Fairmount Park on July 19, has shown movement, and his condition at St. Louis University Hospital has been upgraded from critical to serious. Last weekend Quinn was weaned off a ventilator that had been aiding his breathing since the accident.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - Funny Cide worked four furlongs in 47.82 seconds Tuesday morning at Saratoga and seemed to take a major step toward at least being entered in Saturday's $1 million Travers. However, his entry would be no guarantee that he would run in the race.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - Wally Dollase has trained two champions and won a Breeders' Cup race. But, he still ranks as the single biggest thrill of his training career the afternoon of Aug. 23, 1997, when his Deputy Commander won the Travers Stakes by a nose over Behrens after a stirring stretch drive.
Six years later to the day, Dollase will try to re-create that feeling for himself and his partners in Horizon Stable when he sends out Ten Most Wanted, a son of Deputy Commander, in Saturday's 134th running of the Travers.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - Five trainers who don't want to go through the seemingly futile task of chasing Wild Spirit in Friday's Grade 1 Personal Ensign Handicap have found an easier, albeit far less prestigious race in which to run their fillies and mares.
DEL MAR, Calif. - And now for Act 3 for Labamta Babe. He was a promising 3-year-old in the spring of 2002, but went to the sidelines following a victory in the Santa Catalina Stakes. After a poor fall campaign, he seemed on the ascension again this past January, when he won an allowance race at Santa Anita while gearing up for the Strub Series.
But Labamta Babe failed miserably as the favorite one race later, emerging with sore ankles, and was given a lengthy vacation.
CHICAGO - The trainer Bobby Barnett clearly remembers the sequence of events. Star of Atticus raced on a Saturday and went under the knife on a Monday. That was almost nine months ago. Thursday at Arlington, for the first time since November, Barnett will put racing tack on Star of Atticus, who makes her comeback in a first-level allowance sprint here.
AUBURN, Wash. - Sky Jack, the 123-pound highweight for Sunday's Grade 3 Longacres Mile, took to the Emerald Downs track for the first time on Tuesday morning for an easy gallop under exercise rider Carol Hubbird.
"I just backtracked him, then turned around and galloped a mile," said Hubbird, who serves as assistant to local trainer Terry Gillihan. "He went fine. He's a pro."
Sky Jack, who will be saddled by trainer Doug O'Neill, arrived at Emerald on Monday and settled into Gillihan's barn nicely, according to his regular groom, Savas Riberara.
