Month: January 2023

The Houston Racing Festival will take place on Saturday, Jan. 28, with five stakes highlighted by the Grade 3, $300,000 Houston Ladies Classic. The second graded stakes on the card, the Grade 3, $200,000 John B. Connally Turf Cup, attracted 12 turf specialists, including 2021 winner Spooky Channel and last year's winner Another Mystery. Post time for the ten-race program is 1:00 pm (CT).

NBS Stable's Spooky Channel has been installed as the 5-2 morning line choice. The son of elite turf stallion English Channel out of the Kitten's Joy mare Spooky Kitten, has won 12 of his 26 starts, with lifetime earnings of $661,722. Following his victory in the 2021 Grade 3 Sycamore at Keeneland, the Kentucky-bred gelding had an extended layoff. He returned to action last month at Fair Grounds, winning the Buddy Diliberto Memorial. Trainer Jason Barkley and his owners were pleased with the performance of Spooky Channel.

“He was training well so we decided to run him at Fair Grounds,” said Barkley. “We had considered retiring him, but he had a huge comeback effort and came out of the race really well.”

Jockey James Graham, who rode Fantasioso to a thrilling dead heat finish with Another Mystery in last year's edition of the Connally, has the call aboard the now 8-year-old Spooky Channel. He will break from post seven.

“James is a very accomplished turf rider,” added Barkley. “The horse has a true affinity for the turf and can cover a lot of ground. We are looking forward to Saturday's race.”

Trainer Chris Block will saddle Another Mystery, who returns for the third time in the mile and one-half Connally. The 7-year-old Illinois-bred son of Temple City ran sixth here in 2020, but closed with authority last year under rider Jareth Loveberry to catch Fantasioso at the wire. It was the first dead heat in the 27-year history of the turf championship.

“I actually thought he had won it, but we were really proud of his effort,” said Block. “He's obviously a three-turn horse and gets better the further he goes. In 2020, he did not have the preparation we wanted, coming into the race with just ten days rest. He had a real good work at Fair Grounds (on January 21) and Jareth always puts him in good position.”

Team Block won the 2006 Connally Turf Cup with Fort Prado. They bred and campaigned Another Mystery's dam Ioya Two, who was a Grade 3 winner.

Trainer Mike Maker has won seven of the past ten editions of the mile and one-half stakes which is named in honor of the late Texas Governor John B. Connally. He will not make the trip to Houston this year as he will saddle twelve on Pegasus Cup Day at Gulfstream Park. Nevertheless, Maker will be represented by three turf runners in Houston this year, notably 2020 Connally runner-up, Bemma's Boy for owner Paradise Farm Corp. The 8-year-old son of Into Mischief will be making his 23rd career start, breaking from post position seven under Reylu Gutierrez.

Kinenos, a 6-year-old by Empire Maker, will be ridden by Corey Lanerie and exits a fifth-place finish in the $100,000 H. Allen Jerkens last month at Gulfstream Park for Paradise Farm Corp. and David Staudacher. Completing the Maker trio is Sanford J. Goldfarb's Bay Street Money, who will make his stakes debut under Kendrick Carmouche. He's a 6-year-old son of Street Sense out of a Dynaformer mare Collect the Cash who will break from the far outside post

“He's run well in Houston in the past,” said Maker of Bemma's Boy. “Kinenos had bad luck in the Allen Jerkens, but is doing well. Bay Street Money will make his first start at this distance, but I love his pedigree.”

Carmouche, one of the most respected jockeys in North America, was born in Vinton, Louisiana and rode here as an apprentice. The 39-year-old, who is currently the second-leading rider at Aqueduct in New York, is looking forward to his return here on Saturday.

“I rode at Sam Houston as an apprentice in 2001 and believe I won around 18 races,” said Carmouche. “It's been a while, but I am excited about riding there again on Saturday. Sam Houston has one of the best, if not the best turf course in the country!”

Maker's past Connally winners include Papa Bodie in 2012, Admiral Kitten in 2014; Coalport in 2015; Da Big Hoss in 2016 and a three-peat by Three Diamonds Farm's Bigger Picture who captured the 2017-2019 editions of the turf stakes.

Trainer Joe Sharp will send in Scarlet Fushion, a 5-year-old Curlin gelding for prominent Texas owners Brad Grady and Carl Moore Management, LLC. Jockey Adam Beschizza will guide the Kentucky-bred who returns to turf off his third-place finish in the $200,000 Tinsel Stakes last month at Oaklawn Park.

The John B. Connally Turf was awarded Grade 3 status in 2006 and boasts a solid roster of past winners including Chorwon, Warleigh, Fort Prado, Rod and Staff, Swift Warrior as well as three-time champions, Candid Glen and Bigger Picture. It will run as race ten, with an approximate post time of 5:55 pm (CT).

The field, from the rail, with riders and morning-line odds:

1. Scarlet Fusion, Adam Beschizza, 8-1;
2. Kinenos, Corey Lanerie, 15-1;
3. Portos, Lane Luzzi, 20-1;
4. Devamani, Ernesto Valdez-Jiminez, 30-1;
5. Bemma's Boy, Rey Gutierrez, 7-2;
6. Logical Myth, Leandro Goncalves, 15-1;
7. U S Navy Cross, Sahin Civaci, 30-1;
8. Risk Manager, Weston Hamilton, 20-1;
9. Spooky Channel, James Graham, 5-2;
10. Another Mystery, Jareth Loveberry, 9-2;
11. Seductive U S A, Rudy Guerra, 30-1; and
12. Bay Street Money, Kendrick Carmouche, 6-1.

As previously announced, the eleventh renewal of the Grade 3, $300,000 Houston Ladies Classic will run as the ninth race, with an approximate post time of 5:25 pm (CT). Defending champion Pauline's Pearl leads the field, from the rail, with jockeys and morning line odds:

1. Fast and Feminine, Weston Hamilton (30-1);
2. Oliviaofthedesert, James Graham (15-1);
3. She Can't Sing, Jareth Loveberry (7-2);
4. Hidden Connection, Reylu Gutierrez (4-1);
5. Pauline's Pearl, Stewart Elliott (6-5);
6. Sixtythreecaliber, Kendrick Carmouche (3-1); and
7. Moon Swag, Corey Lanerie (8-1).

“We are proud of our Houston Racing Festival, which continues to attract top connections and offer an exceptional afternoon of quality racing,” said Frank Hopf, Sam Houston Race Park's Assistant General Manager.

The live feed of the Houston Racing Festival card will be available for free on shrp.com.

The post Spooky Channel Headlines Sam Houston’s Connally Turf Cup After ‘Huge Comeback Effort’ appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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Saturday's $200,000 William L. McKnight (G3) at Gulfstream Park will be the 50th career start for Gary Barber, Wachtel Stable, R.A. Hill Stable and Reeves Thoroughbred Racing's Channel Maker, a 9-year-old son of turf champion English Channel that owns nine lifetime wins – six coming at 1 ½ miles – and nearly $3.8 million in purse earnings.

The 1 ½-mile McKnight for 4-year-olds and up on the grass is part of a blockbuster 13-race program featuring nine stakes, seven graded, worth $5.4 million in purses headlined by the $3 million Pegasus World Cup (G1), $1 million Pegasus World Cup Turf (G1), and $500,000 TAA Pegasus Filly & Mare Turf (G3).

Post time is 10:50 a.m., with the McKnight carded as Race 9 with a 3:01 p.m. post time. NBC will provide live national coverage from 4:30 to 6 p.m. All times are EST.

All nine of Channel Maker's wins have come in stakes – he broke his maiden in the 2016 Vandal at Woodbine – including Grade 1 victories in the 2018 and 2020 Turf Classic and 2019 Man o' War at Belmont and 2020 Sword Dancer at Saratoga. He won two of six starts in 2022, the Elkhorn (G2) at Keeneland and Grand Couturier at Belmont and will be racing for the first time since finishing seventh in the Nov. 5 Breeders' Cup Turf (G1).

“He's doing real well and training well, and we thought, 'Let's just point for this race.' This race will be a good one to get him back started for this year,” co-owner Dean Reeves said. “He's a horse that never ages. When I go see him, he looks just as good as he did two years ago.”

Channel Maker has raced at nine different racetracks in the U.S. and Canada as well as in Dubai and Saudi Arabia in the winter of 2021. He won the 2017 Sovereign Award as Canada's champion 3-year-old colt and the 2020 Eclipse Award as North America's top turf male. He is 0-for-5 at Gulfstream, his best finishes fourths in the 1 3/8-mile Mac Diarmida (G2) in 2019 and 2020. Channel Maker did not race at Gulfstream in 2021 or 2022.

“I was looking the other day and he's won almost four million dollars. The horse is just a warrior. He trains well. He's one of those that, boy, if they were all like that you'd have a lot more people in the business. He's really just a neat horse,” Reeves said.

“He is a throwback. He's been to Dubai, he's been to Saudi Arabia. He ran well in Saudi Arabia to finish second,” he added. “He's an Eclipse Award winner, a multiple Grade 1 winner. What else can you ask one to do?”

Tyler Gaffalione is named to ride for the first time from Post 7.

A year after registering his last victory, Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners and Alex Daigneault's Abaan returns to South Florida looking to rediscover his winning ways and make a title defense in the McKnight.

Abaan is a gelded 6-year-old son of 2013 champion 3-year-old male Will Take Charge that will be making just his second start since finishing fifth in the two-mile Belmont Gold Cup (G2) last June. It was his 11th start in 12 months that included a maiden victory in September 2021 at Saratoga and a triumph in the two-mile H. Allen Jerkens in December 2021 at Gulfstream that previewed his win in the McKnight.

“We gave him some time off after the race at Belmont on Belmont Stakes Day,” Eclipse founder and president Aron Wellman said. “He had a really hardy campaign at that point, very productive, won a couple stakes, so we decided to freshen up the second half of the year and come back guns blazing hopefully for this year's campaign.”

Abaan returned in a 1 1/16-mile optional claiming allowance Dec. 4 on the Gulfstream turf, a race where he found himself on the lead after six furlongs but wound up fifth as the favorite behind Sky's Not Falling, making a successful stretch out after winning the Maryland Million Turf Sprint.

“The timing of his comeback was a little tricky. We would have loved to have gotten a prep into him before the Jerkens, which was a race he won the year before going two miles, and the timing of it just didn't mesh,” Wellman said. “So, we ran him in an allowance race going shorter than ideal for him, and he kind of got run off his feet a little bit.

“He was very prominent through wicked fast fractions at a distance that wasn't his best, but he definitely got a lot out of that race and he's trained exceptionally well since,” he added. “I think you're going to see the Abaan on Saturday that we got accustomed to seeing in late 2021 and early 2022.”

Luis Saez, up for the past seven starts including the Jerkens and McKnight, gets the return call from Post 4 in an overflow field of 13. Hall of Fame trainer Todd Pletcher also won the McKnight with Balto Star in 2003, Divine Oath in 2014 and Charming Kitten in 2015.

“It's going to be a race that's going to be largely contingent on pace and the draw [is] important for him as well, but we think he's going to be a lot more comfortable at a mile and a half,” Wellman said. “He's proven at the distance and at the level, so it would be feather in his cap for him and our partners to try to repeat here.”

Trainer Mike Maker is a four-time winner of the McKnight including three straight editions with Taghleeb (2017), Oscar Nominated (2018) and Zulu Alpha (2019) as well as Tide of the Sea (2021). Maker entered four horses in his bid for a fifth victory – Temple, Value Engineering, Red Knight and Wicked Fast.

Paradise Farms Corp. and David Staudacher's Temple has been third or better in 12 of 15 lifetime starts on the Gulfstream turf, including a runner-up finish behind Abaan last year. Five of those races are wins led by the 2022 Mac Diarmida, his most recent victory. Maker claimed the 7-year-old gelding for $35,000 in July 2019, lost him for $80,000 two summers later but spent the same amount to get him back that fall.

Michael Hui and Phil Forte's Value Engineering became a stakes winner in his debut for Maker with a 1 ¼-length victory in an off-the-turf edition of the Jerkens in December at Gulfstream. Trinity Farm's Red Knight joined Maker's string last summer and promptly won back-to-back stakes capped by the Kentucky Downs Turf Cup (G2). Winner of Gulfstream's 2018 Jerkens, he was fourth as the favorite in the 2020 McKnight.

Jordan Wycoff's Wicked Fast was second to Value Engineering in the Jerkens, his third start since being sent to Maker last fall. He was disqualified from first to second for interference in an optional claimer last February at Gulfstream and was fourth, beaten 2 ½ lengths, in the Oct. 22 Hill Prince (G2) at Aqueduct.

Time for Trouble, last out winner of the Nov. 12 Claiming Crown Iron Horse on dirt Nov. 12; Grade 3-placed Shawdyshawdyshawdy; Pao Alto, a group-stakes winner in Qatar and his native France that was seventh in the Dec. 31 Fort Lauderdale (G2) at Gulfstream; Irish-bred Agitare, winner of the two-mile John Forbes Memorial last fall at Far Hills; multiple stakes-placed Harlan Estate; and Reigning Spirit, beaten a neck when second 1 ½-mile Louisville (G3) last spring, complete the field.

Rhianon Farms, Inc.'s Barberini, third by two lengths in the Jerkens, is the lone also-eligible.

The post ‘Horse That Never Ages’: 9-Year-Old Channel Maker Makes 2023 Debut In Saturday’s McKnight appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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With trainer Al Stall hailing from New Orleans, it's appropriate that he uses the term 'lagniappe' when he discusses the 7-year-old German-bred mare Dalika running in Gulfstream Park's $500,000 TAA Pegasus Filly & Mare Turf Invitational (G3) presented by Pepsi. After all, the Cajun-French-inspired word, pronounced LAN-yap, means a gift or something extra.

The 1 1/16-mile grass stakes will mark the last race of Dalika's career, which started out with three races in Europe as a 2-year-old before she was purchased by Paul Varga's Bal Mar Equine LLC and sent to Stall. In America, Dalika has won nine of 28 races, with six seconds and nearly all of her $1.44 million in earnings.

Dalika's key race came in the Beverly D. Stakes last July at Churchill Downs, giving her the Grade 1 victory for which she was kept in training in 2022. The Beverly D. was held at Dalika's home track after the closing of Chicago's Arlington Park. With the switch, the distance was shortened to 1 1/8 miles over a course playing to speed, with the race having only five starters.

“The whole year was house money,” Stall said by phone from New Orleans. “We stumbled on the Beverly D. Everything was just lagniappe, as we say. [But] we wouldn't be doing this if she wasn't just perfectly sound and very happy with herself right now.”

Varga said via text that Dalika's stallion mating should be finalized in the next couple of weeks and that he'll be keep his options open whether to keep her or sell.

Dalika has rewarded Varga and Stall well for their patience and gambling on another season of racing after she won her first graded stakes in 2021 at Delaware Park. The result was winning three more graded-stakes — the Kentucky Downs Ladies Turf (G3) following the Beverly D. and Cardinal (G3) Nov. 25 in her last start — and just a few bucks shy of $850,000.

“She's been an enigma for most of the time,” Stall said. “This last season has been unbelievably gratifying for everybody. We made the conscious decision to keep her in training one more year to take some shots at Grade 1 races and things like that. We gave her a good freshening during the winter and she came back really, really good. To win the Beverly D. was really a fortunate thing for us. And to be able to knock out these big, fat purses since then, it's just been a great year for her. It makes you feel good about treating a horse properly, giving them a nice break and having them come back and deliver.”

Dalika, who will be ridden for the fifth straight race by Brian Hernandez Jr., has proven most effective racing on the lead.

“The ones they've added on to this field, it does seem like there's some speed in there, horses literally coming out of six-furlong races to go around two turns at this level,” Stall said of the Pegasus F&M Turf. “We're a front-running type of horse, so that's going to be interesting to see how that shakes out.

“She just needs to be comfortable. She's come from off the pace before and won. A lot of races, she's been rank, and now she's quite a bit kinder. I just want her to be comfortable, break well,” he added. “You can tell early whether she's getting over the ground like you'd want a horse to. If it goes that way, that's all we can ask for — she'll give it herself the best chance to win. If she's not comfortable at a new course like Gulfstream, if she gets trapped on the fence with some outside speed, things might not go well.”

Keeping Dalika comfortable is why the mare has spent the last month at an Ocala training center. That not only makes for a much shorter ship to Gulfstream Park the Wednesday before the race, but it's a quieter environment than Stall's main winter base of the Fair Grounds. It's the same reason that when Dalika was in Kentucky, she trained at the Skylight Training Center about 40 minutes from Churchill Downs.

Because she does so much in her daily training, Dalika only sporadically has timed workouts.

“She's just a horse that's tough to train,” Stall said. “She's very, very strong all the time. The gallop person earns their keep every time they get on her. That's just the way she's always been. That's why we keep her in the most tranquil, serene place you could possibly be. Just training on a day-to-day basis, we felt like she'd do herself more harm than good being in all the traffic on a narrow racetrack. We basically keep her all by herself.

“Once she gets fit, there's not a whole lot to do with her. The Beverly D was her third race off a freshening. All we've done literally since is just piddle around,” he added. “She seems to like that, so we're not changing anything.”

The post Morning-Line Favorite Dalika Will Make Final Career Start In ‘Bonus’ Pegasus Filly & Mare Turf appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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