Firenze Fire, the half-length winner of Saturday’s $150,000 Jerome Stakes at Aqueduct, will most likely make his next start in the Grade 3, $300,000 Gotham Stakes at Aqueduct on March 10, trainer Jason Servis said Sunday.
Servis said Firenze Fire would be nominated to the Grade 3, $250,000 Withers Stakes on Feb. 3, but he would only consider running the horse “If he’s coming over the webbing,” Servis said. “It’s safe to say we’ll do the Gotham.”
NEW ORLEANS – Trainer Tim Glyshaw is plotting a 2018 campaign for the two best horses in his stable, Bucchero and Bullard’s Alley.
Bullard’s Alley was a respectable sixth in the Breeders’ Cup Turf, while Bucchero was a close fourth in the BC Turf Sprint.
“We’d like to get points in nice races to try to get back to the Breeders’ Cup at Churchill with them,” Glyshaw said.
NEW ORLEANS – Trainer Sam David is running hard with the opportunity he got last year.
David was training a handful of horses and breaking some youngsters at the Copper Crowne Training Center in Opelousas, La., when the owner-breeder partnership of John Duvieilh and Earl and Keith Hernandez asked him last summer if he’d like to join their team.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Saturday morning was busy throughout this area for potential Pegasus World Cup starters.
Most action was over a sloppy track at Gulfstream Park West, where Gunnevera, Sharp Azteca, and War Story all went five furlongs in their penultimate works for the $16 million event. Singing Bullet and Giussepe the Great breezed at Gulfstream Park, although neither is currently confirmed for the big event.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Trainer Todd Pletcher has won three of the last four runnings of the Florida Derby with Constitution (2014), Materiality (2015), and last year’s Kentucky Derby hero Always Dreaming. If he’s to add to that impressive résumé this spring, it could be with Noble Indy, a son of Take Charge Indy who kept his record perfect after two starts with a game, half-length victory going 1 1/16 miles under allowance conditions here last week.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Expect to see Chocolate Coated in a turf stakes for fillies and mares at Santa Anita in coming days.
Whether Monday’s Grade 3 Megahertz Stakes at a mile or Saturday’s Grade 3 Las Cienegas Stakes at about 6 1/2 furlongs on the hillside turf course is the chosen race will be decided this weekend, trainer Neil French said.
“We have to make a difficult decision,” French said Saturday. “The hill race looks like it’s coming up a little easier than the race on Monday.
“If she runs on Monday, I think she’ll run well.”
The 2018 Emerald Downs stakes schedule looks similar to last year, with a notable scheduling change for the statebred Washington Cup events. The schedule comprises 28 stakes worth a total of $1.45 million during a 67-day meet that opens April 22.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Weather permitting, there will be a nine-race card Monday, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, at Aqueduct, topped by the $100,000 Interborough Stakes for female sprinters, which drew a large, competitive field of 10.
Come Dancing, who has won both of her career starts – albeit 13 months apart – will step into stakes company for the first time for trainer Carlos Martin. Come Dancing won her career debut at Aqueduct on Nov. 6, 2016, by 3 1/2 lengths but was subsequently sidelined by a fractured pastern that required surgery.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – If a Grade 1 winner starts in the Grade 2 Wood Memorial, the purse of the race will be bumped to $1 million from its current level of $750,000, the New York Racing Association announced Friday. All horses who run in the race would run for the winner’s share of $1 million.
The Wood, which offers 170 qualifying points to the May 5 Kentucky Derby, is scheduled for April 7.
The Wood was a Grade 1 from 2002 to 2016 before being downgraded to a Grade 2 for the 2017 running. Its purse had been $1 million from 2011 to 2016.
