Sponsored by:
Gamine sets a track record for seven furlongs (1:20.20) in the 2020 Breeders Cup Filly and Mare Sprint at Keeneland.
Idle since winning the Grade 1 Breeders Cup Filly & Mare Sprint Nov. 7 at Keeneland, Bob Baffert s brilliant 4-year-old filly Gamine towers over her competition going six furlongs in Sunday s Grade 3, $100,000 Las Flores Stakes at Santa Anita.
Supplemented at a cost of $2,000, owner Michael Lund Petersen s Gamine will face three rival fillies and mares in what will be her first start at Santa Anita since she aired by 6 ¼ lengths in her 6 ½ furlong debut on March 7, 2020. A winner of both the Grade 1 Acorn Stakes going a one turn mile at Belmont Park on June 20 and the Grade 1 Test Stakes going seven furlongs at Saratoga Aug. 8, Gamine, who was purchased for $1.8 million at the Fasig Tipton Mid Atlantic 2-Year-Olds in Training Sale in May, 2019, has four wins from six starts with earnings of $883,000.
Sponsored by:
Fair Maiden winning the La Brea Stakes on Dec. 26
A longshot winner of the opening day Grade 1 La Brea Stakes, trainer Eoin Harty s Fair Maiden will seek to validate that victory as she heads a solid field of 12 older fillies and mares going seven furlongs in Saturday s Grade 2, $200,000 Santa Monica Stakes at Santa Anita.
Dismissed at 20-1 in the Dec. 26 La Brea, Fair Maiden rallied for an emphatic 2 ¼ length win, as a pair of Bob Baffert fillies, Golden Principal and Merneith, ran second and third. Harty, a former assistant to Baffert, will have to again contend with those two plus yet another Baffert runner, Qahira.
Training Horses Is Still A Work Of Art For Sherman Sponsored by:
Trainer Art Sherman
The New Year is here and one of racing s undisputed good guys, Art Sherman, welcomed it in fine fettle as he prepares to turn 84 on Feb. 17.
In 2016, Sherman was named winner of the Big Sport of Turfdom Award, awarded annually by the Turf Publicists of America honoring a “person or group of people who enhance coverage of Thoroughbred racing through cooperation with media and racing publicists.”
Sherman, who gained fame and fortune most trainers can only dream about when California Chrome burst on the scene in 2013, is content with a more mundane pace these days.
By Margaret Ransom
Courtesy of Santa Anita press release
A talent-filled opening day program on Saturday at Santa Anita Park will help usher out a year of horse racing that has been unpredictable, turbulent and downright implausible, and hopefully foreshadow a 2021 that will mark a return to some semblance of normalcy.
Once again, the $300,000 Runhappy Malibu Stakes (G1) is the centerpiece of an 11-race card that features an additional five stakes races and has drawn a standout field of six sophomores looking for a win in the final Grade 1 of the year in North America.
A year ago, the first day of Santa Anita’s 2019 winter/spring season was postponed due to inclement weather before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, but things will get underway at day after Christmas under mostly sunny skies and an afternoon high near 70 degrees. First post on opening day is 11 a.m. PT.
Finite to Face Baffert Quartet in La Brea bloodhorse.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from bloodhorse.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.