Del Mar | Horse Racing Free Tips

C Z Rocket Seeks O’Brien Repeat

C Z Rocket (City Zip) will be looking to earn another automatic berth to the GI Breeders' Cup Sprint when he attempts to defend his title in the 'Win and You're In' GII Pat O'Brien S. at Del Mar Saturday night. The 7-year-old gelding has hit the board in all 10 starts–with seven wins–since being claimed for $40,000 last April. He earned his first graded score in last year's Pat O'Brien and followed up with a win in the GII Santa Anita Sprint Championship S. before concluding the year with a runner-up effort behind Whitmore (Pleasantly Perfect) in the Breeders' Cup Sprint. He has defeated that sprint champion twice this year, winning the Mar. 13 Hot Springs S. and Apr. 10 GIII Count Fleet Sprint H. He was second in the May 31 GIII Steve Sexton Mile S. at Lone Star and missed by just a neck after a wide trip when third in the July 31 GI Bing Crosby S. last time out.

Flagstaff (Speightstown) will be aiming to improve on his second in last year's Pat O'Brien for trainer John Sadler and jockey Joe Bravo. The 7-year-old gelding won the GIII Commonwealth S. at Keeneland in April and just got his head in front for a dramatic victory in the May 1 GI Churchill Downs S. He was most recently second in the June 4 GII True North S.

'TDN Rising Star' Eight Rings (Empire Maker), who captured the GI American Pharoah S. over the Del Mar oval as a 2-year-old in 2019, came up just a neck short when second in that blanket finish to the Bing Crosby. He comes into the Pat O'Brien off a pair of bullet drills, most recently going six furlongs in 1:11 4/5 (1/7) Aug. 22.

The post C Z Rocket Seeks O’Brien Repeat appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

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Weekend Lineup Presented By NYRA Bets: Big Travers Card Features Six Grade 1 Races

A quartet of Breeders' Cup Challenge races and the $1.25 million Travers Stakes highlight this weekend's racing action in North America, with a total of six Grade 1 stakes on Saturday's card at Saratoga.

The Travers drew a field of seven headlined by last year's juvenile champion Essential Quality. The Brad Cox-trained 3-year-old was undefeated until he finished fourth in the Kentucky Derby, but returned to win both the Belmont Stakes and the Jim Dandy.

Other top runners expected to compete on Saturday include champion female sprinter Gamine in the G1 Ballerina, division leader Letruska in the G1 Personal Ensign, and the highly-regarded 3-year-old Life Is Good returns in the Grade 1 H. Allen Jerkens for new trainer Todd Pletcher.

On the West Coast, a Breeders' Cup berth is on the line in Saturday's G2 Pat O'Brien Stakes at Del Mar, where C Z Rocket is the morning-line choice. On Sunday, Kentucky Derby first-place finisher Medina Spirit returns to the races in the listed Shared Belief Stakes.

Here's a quick snapshot of this weekend's graded stakes schedule, starting with Saratoga's big races (all times Eastern):

Saturday

3:02 p.m. – $500,000 Grade 1 Ballerina Handicap at Saratoga

Michael Lund Petersen's Gamine, the Eclipse Award-winning female sprinter of 2020, will get another chance to flash her championship form over a track she dominated last summer when she heads a field of seven in Saturday's G1 Ballerina at Saratoga Race Course.

Also in from the West Coast is Bo Hirsch's 5-year-old homebred mare Ce Ce, who also shipped cross-country for her last start, the G2 Princess Rooney July 3 at Gulfstream Park, beating runner-up and fellow Ballerina entrant Estilo Talentoso.

Godolphin homebred Lake Avenue is chasing her second career graded stakes victory and first in a G1 after running second by a neck in each of her last two starts – the G3 Bed o' Roses June 4 at Belmont Park and G2 Honorable Miss July 28 at Saratoga.

Ballerina Entries

3:37 p.m. – $600,000 Grade 1 Forego Stakes at Saratoga

Calumet Farm homebred Lexitonian, a racing enigma who broke through with his biggest performance to date last month, goes after a second consecutive win for the first time in his career in Saturday's seven-furlong contest.

Five of the eight horses entered in the Forego are G1 winners, including Firenze Fire, Mind Control, Mischevious Alex, and Whitmore, the champion sprinter of 2020. Lexitonian joined the group with a half-length victory in the six-furlong Alfred G. Vanderbilt July 31, his 19th career start.

Also in the field, Yaupon won each of his first four career starts last year, two of them coming at Saratoga – an open allowance triumph over older horses and the G2 Amsterdam – as well as the Chick Lang. Following a troubled eighth in both the Breeders' Cup Sprint to end 2020 and the G1 Dubai Golden Shaheen to open 2021, Yaupon returned to capture Pimlico's Lite the Fuse July 4 in his most recent outing.

Forego Entries

4:12 p.m. – $500,000 Grade 1 H. Allen Jerkens Memorial Stakes at Saratoga

J. Kirk and Judy Robison's Jackie's Warrior will seek to solidify himself as the nation's leading sophomore sprinter when taking on a compact field. Jackie's Warrior, trained by Hall of Famer Steve Asmussen, has shown an affinity for Saratoga, having not come close to losing in three starts at the Spa.

Jackie's Warrior's biggest obstacle could come from the presence of returning graded stakes winner Life Is Good, who arrives off a five-month hiatus and makes his debut for Hall of Fame trainer Todd Pletcher. The highly-regarded son of leading sire Into Mischief, owned by CHC Inc. and WinStar Farm, is unbeaten in three starts on the West Coast and has never been behind horses at any point of call, when racing from the barn of Bob Baffert.

Jerkens Entries

4:47 p.m. – $600,000 Grade 1 Personal Ensign Stakes at Saratoga

Despite Letruska's imposing presence, a field of nine top-class older fillies and mares will line up to go 1 1/18 miles at Saratoga. Trained by Fausto Gutierrez, the dual G1-winning Letruska will be attempting her fourth consecutive graded stakes score. She has already secured her Breeders' Cup Distaff spot with a dominating gate-to-wire 2 ¾ lengths victory in the G1 Ogden Phipps, also a “Win and You're In” event, two starts back at Belmont Park on June 5.

Kenny McPeek is returning Peter Callahan's Swiss Skydiver to the distaff division. After circumstances forced his hand earlier in the Saratoga meet, he ran her in the G1 Whitney against the boys last out on Aug. 7, and she finished fourth.

Bonny South will try to turn the tables on Letruska after a runner-up finish in the Ogden Phipps. The 4-year-old filly was a well-beaten fifth in her last start in the G2 Delaware Handicap as the odds-on favorite, but has been breezing impressively with stablemate, G1 Runhappy Travers Stakes 4-5 favorite [and Belmont Stakes-winner] Essential Quality.

As Time Goes By runs for the Coolmore connections and has been sent from the Southern California base of Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert. She ran second to Swiss Skydiver in the G1 Beholder Mile and then racked up a pair of G2 wins, taking the Santa Margarita by 9 ¼ lengths and the Santa Maria by a nose, both at Santa Anita.

Personal Ensign Entries

5:25 p.m. – $750,000 Grade 1 Sword Dancer Stakes at Saratoga

Four-time Eclipse Award-winning trainer Chad Brown will saddle a pair of strong contenders in Tribhuvan and Rockemperor, who will square off against a talented field of G1 winners in the 1 1/2-mile turf contest, which offers a “Win and You're In” berth to the winner for the Breeders' Cup Turf.

With seven wins and more than $3.2 million in purse earnings, Channel Maker will make his fourth straight Sword Dancer appearance following a second in 2018, a fourth in 2019, and a win last year to highlight his championship campaign that also included a score in the G1 Joe Hirsch Turf Classic at Belmont.

Japan, trained by Aidan O'Brien, will make his first start in North America. The 5-year-old, who boasts a record of seven wins and four thirds from 18 starts with purse earnings in excess of $2.1 million, posted consecutive G1 wins in 2019 in the 12-furlong Grand Prix de Paris at Longchamp and the 1 5/16-mile Juddmonte International at York. Japan has notched a pair of G3 wins in four starts this campaign, taking the 1 11/16-mile Ormond in May at Chester and the nine-furlong Meld last out on July 15 at Leopardstown.

Sword Dancer Entries

6:12 p.m. – $1.25 million Grade 1 Travers Stakes at Saratoga

Juvenile champion Essential Quality overcame Hot Rod Charlie's blistering fractions to run down his rival in the G1 Belmont Stakes on June 5 and followed that 109 Beyer Speed Figure effort with a half-length win over Travers rival Keepmeinmind in the G2 Jim Dandy going 1 1/8 miles.

Keepmeinmind competed in the Triple Crown's second leg, running fourth in the Preakness before earning additional black type with a third place G3 Ohio Derby performance in June. Keepmeinmind matched his career-best 97 Beyer for closing on Essential Quality in the Jim Dandy last month, finishing second and 2 1/4 lengths ahead of fellow Travers foe Masqueparade.

Midnight Bourbon, the runner-up to Rombauer in the Preakness, has not raced since clipping heels with Hot Rod Charlie and unseating rider Paco Lopez in the G1 Haskell in July at Monmouth Park. Masqueparade bested King Fury by a half length in the Ohio Derby, extending his winning streak to three, before finishing third in a Jim Dandy contest that will see the trifecta rematch in the Travers.

King Fury, runner-up in the Ohio Derby, trained at Saratoga through an EHV-1 quarantine, causing him to miss the G2 Jim Dandy and instead return in the G1 Saratoga Derby Invitational on Aug. 7. He finished 10th after a wide trip in his turf debut.

Dynamic One – second in the G2 Wood Memorial – showed his affinity for the Saratoga track last out, rallying from last-of-seven to close strong, besting Miles D by 1 3/4 lengths in the Curlin on July 30 at Saratoga for his first stakes victory.

Travers Entries

9:35 p.m. – $200,000 Grade 2 Pat O'Brien Stakes at Del Mar

A field of 10 stout sprinters will travel seven furlongs the Breeders' Cup “Win and You're In” Challenge race funneling into the Dirt Mile.

Morning-line choice C Z Rocket, a veteran gelding who found a new lease on life when he was haltered for $40,000 16 months ago and took up residence in the barn of trainer Peter Miller. The 7-year-old has since won seven races, four of them stakes, and placed in three other added-money tests to bank more than $1.1-million for his new connections.

Chief threat to C Z Rocket appears to be another classy veteran, the 7-year-old Flagstaff, a winner of seven races and $1,011,585. The gelding by sprint champion Speightstown has made five starts this year, but this will be his first in his California home base.

Trainer Bob Baffert has a pair in the dash in Eight Rings and Classier. The former, a 4-year-old colt by Empire Maker, was second beaten only a neck in the G1 Bing Crosby Stakes at six furlongs earlier in the meet. Classier, a 3-year-old colt also by Empire Maker, shortens up off a score in the Los Alamitos Derby at nine furlongs on July 4.

O'Brien Entries

Here's a look at the remainder of the weekend's graded stakes, courtesy of NTRA:

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Charlie McCaul: The Racetrack Called And He Found A Home

The name – thick Irish that it is – is Charles Gerard McCaul. But if you're like everyone else at a racetrack in Southern California, you simply know him as “Charlie.”

For the past 29 years, Charlie has run the jockeys rooms at Del Mar, Santa Anita, Hollywood Park, Pomona and Los Alamitos as the Clerk of Scales, a job insiders know well but the general public hardly recognizes.

The Clerk of Scales is the guy who “runs the room,” making sure all is right in one of the most unique arrangements in all of sports. Racing is the only sport where competitors don't have different locker rooms/dugouts/dressing rooms for the times in between the frays. In the world of Thoroughbreds, they all gather in one large room with all the energy and combustibleness that phenomenally fit and ferociously competitive athletes can bring to the party. At one moment two riders are side-by-side on the racetrack, shouting, sweating, whipping and giving their all to beat the guy next to him. In the next moment they are side-by-side again, sitting next to each other at their lockers.

Running that show and keeping things on the level is no mean feat. It takes someone special to set the right tone, gain full respect and make sure things flow smoothly day in and day out.

That's our guy Charlie.

He didn't come to the job by way of a hand out. He paid his dues and worked his way into it after years and years of learning the racetrack from the ground up.

His tale is a classic, worth a telling.

His folks were from the “old country,” Letterkenny, Ireland, in fact, in the northern part of the country in County Donegal. Irish Catholic through and through with a priest and a nun as part of the clan, and a family pub named, of course, “McCaul's.”

His dad, also Charles (Charles Lewis McCaul), came to America to go to school and graduated with a degree in accounting from New York's Columbia University. He sent for his true love – Anne, known as “Ita” – and next thing you knew their apartment in the Bronx became much too small when the fifth child came around. So they were off to a home in Valley Stream, Long Island (not far from Belmont Park, as it so happened) where the kids got to growing with one of them – young Charlie – finding a couple of loves that he still holds today, the New York Yankees and horse racing.

With their parents' encouragement, the McCaul clan all headed to college and “proper” careers. All, that is, but young Charlie.

“I had seen Secretariat run,” he recalled, “and that hooked me right there. I was in love with horses and horse racing. My older brother, Patrick, had landed a job walking 'hots' at the track and, after I graduated from high school, I got in, too. Right from the start I liked it.

“I started out walking hots for Reggie Cornell when he had the Calumet Farm horses, the devil's red and blue. Worked my way up to a groom. Stayed with him for a couple of years but he lost the horses when they brought in John Veitch. Worked for King Ranch, then got back with Reggie when he now had Aaron Jones as his main client, so we were heading to California for the winters – first time for the '76 Oak Tree meet – then back to New York for the summers. I also worked for Elliott Burch when he had Alfred Vanderbilt and the C.V. Whitney as his clients. Nice horses for sure.

“So in 1981 I came back to New York one last time and decided California was where I wanted to be. Packed my car full of my things and drove west. First signed on with Jude Feld, then went to work with (the late trainer) Eddie Gregson. He was grooming me to be an assistant and then a trainer, but I told him I didn't like the thought of that – too tough, too cutthroat a world. So he said let me go to (Santa Anita's Director of Racing) Mr. (Jimmy) Kilroe and see what I can do. Mr. Kilroe gave some encouragement to Tom Robbins in the racing office to hire this young McCaul guy and I was off and running.”

Over the next several years Charlie became a stewards' aide, a patrol judge, a placing judge and then an assistant clerk of scales. (During that span he got the official seal of approval as a member of the west coast horse family when Bill Shoemaker, the notorious practical joker of the jockeys' room, put shaving cream in his hat, then watched it run down the side of his face when he put it on. “You're OK kid,” Shoe said with that grin of his. Charlie felt like he'd passed the test.)

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He especially liked working in “the room.” Eventually when the long-time clerk of scales Dean Scarborough – a former professional baseball player and one of the classiest men you'd ever want to meet – retired in 1992, he recommended Charlie to take over. Ever since – at all Southern California tracks – he's been “the man.” He's been the guy that — among other things — weighs them “out” (at the scale inside the jockeys' room prior to them heading out to ride), then weighs them “in” (after they've ridden at the scale alongside the winner's circle).

There were some years when he hardly got to draw a deep breath in his new role. He'd work Del Mar, then Pomona, then Hollywood Park, then Santa Anita, then Hollywood Park again then Del Mar. (“It was tough,” he recalled. “Almost no time for yourself; no breaks. Six days a week at Del Mar, then 30 straight days at Pomona. Oh, man. I'm glad I was younger and stronger.”)

A couple of the veteran riders in the current Del Mar room – both of whom have known and worked with Charlie for more than 30 years – were asked their opinions on him.

“He's fair, very fair,” said Hall of Fame rider Kent Desormeaux. “He lets us know exactly what he expects of his riders. He let's us know we're representing him, not the other way around. That the best thing a Clerk of Scales can do.”

Another Hall of Famer, Mike Smith, had high praise for Charlie, too. “He's an upstanding official and he's a man of faith, which really registers with me,” Smith said. “We talk sports, too. He'll tell you all about those quarterbacks and how they take the snap and drop back. He'll let you know about the ones that can really do it. And what's especially good about him is that he stays level; he's always the same. That makes him easy to work with.”

Charlie has held on to the things of his youth. He still goes to Mass every Sunday. (“They know I'm going to be a little late in the racing office on Sunday, but they understand.”) He still loves his Yankees. (“When I was a kid my Dad took me out to the monuments in centerfield at Yankee Stadium. I saw all the Yankee greats there – Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, Mantle – and I had this fantasy that I'd work for them some day and meet all the Yankee heroes. But instead I went to the racetrack and met heroes just as big – Pincay, Shoemaker, McCarron, Delahoussaye, Toro, P. Val, Stevens, Hawley and on and on. It came true for me.”) And he's glad that he found a place that makes a hard-working man happy. His current job additionally calls for a full morning of him taking entries from trainers and jockey agents in the backside racing office; drawing the actual races; then collecting and disseminate the scratches on race day. Finally, he spends the rest of the day in “the room.” His many roles at the racetrack have earned him a nickname that fits so well: “DoItAll McCaul.”

On reflection, he's found solace in a part of his life that once troubled him.

“My Dad died too early; he had a heart attack when he was only 53,” Charlie said. “And for a long time, I felt like maybe I let him down. My brothers and sisters went to school and found good careers. And all I did was go to the racetrack. But of late I'm thinking differently. I've got a good occupation with good people doing something I love. If my Dad was here now, I believe he'd agree.”

2021 marks year 47 of Charlie at the racetrack. Today, in particular, also marks something special: his 65th birthday. So if you see him somewhere around the racetrack today, doing one of the many things he does, wish him a happy birthday. Then watch the big smile of a happy, hard-working man spread across his face.

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Medina Spirit Supplemented to Shared Belief

Medina Spirit (Protonico) was supplemented, at a cost of $1,000, to Sunday's Shared Belief S., a one-mile event for 3-year-olds on the Del Mar main track. The $100,000 contest will be the first start for the colt since finishing third–beaten five lengths–by Rombauer in the GI Preakness S. at Pimlico May 15. His victory in the May 1 GI Kentucky Derby victory remains in limbo pending a Kentucky Horse Racing Commission ruling.

“I've entered him, he's running,” Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert said. “I figure I'll use this as a prep for the Penn [$1-million GI Pennsylvania Derby, Sept. 25) and see how he likes this track.”

In his most recent work Monday, the dark bay covered five furlongs in :58.60, finishing on par with stablemate Ax Man for the fastest of 68 works at the distance and better than a half-second quicker than the next fastest move.

“He worked a little fast but he came out of it good,” Baffert said. “He's going to need the race, coming off a layoff, and he's got to go a mile. But, if I can run him here that will set him up to go on to the Pennsylvania Derby.”

Also scheduled to contest the Shared Belief is Rock Your World (Candy Ride {Arg}), who defeated Medina Spirit by four lengths in the Apr. 3 GI Runhappy Santa Anita Derby. Rock Your World, trained by John Sadler, subsequently finished 17th in the Kentucky Derby and sixth–beaten 22 lengths by Essential Quality–in the GI Belmont S. June 5.

The post Medina Spirit Supplemented to Shared Belief appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

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