GI Coaching Club American Oaks

Douglas Scharbauer and Three Chimneys Farm's Always a Runner (Gun Runner), who delivered a decisive performance Friday night under the lights at Churchill Downs to win the GI Longines Kentucky Oaks, will ship to Saratoga and prepare for a summer campaign according to Chad Brown. The trainer said the filly will target the major Grade I races for 3-year-old fillies upstate. The GI Coaching Club Oaks at nine furlongs on the dirt is slated to run July 25. "These big races, with big fields, you have to have plans A,...

Scottish Lassie (McKinzie), winless in three attempts since breaking her maiden in style by nine lengths in last fall's GI Frizette S., got back on track in a big way with a daylight decision in Saturday's GI Coaching Club American Oaks Invitational at Saratoga. The 2-1 shot vied for early command and took over control from champion Immersive (Nyquist) on the clubhouse turn and made her way to the rail in the scratched-down field of four. And it was pretty much over from there. Scottish Lassie showed the way through...

Saturday's card at Monmouth Park features a 14-race card which is highlighted by six stakes--five of them graded--including the Oceanport oval's sophomore showpiece, the GI NYRA Bets Haskell Stakes. This year's renewal of the race has drawn this season's GI Preakness winner Journalism (Curlin), who is campaigned by Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners, Bridlewood Farm and Don Alberto Stable. A mighty good horse before he ever embarked on the Triple Crown, the $825,000 Fasig-Tipton Saratoga yearling purchase won four of five starts heading to the Run for the Roses, including the GI...

SARATOGA SPRINGS -- Before this year, the last time Victor Espinoza rode at Saratoga was the summer of 2015, the year of American Pharoah (Pioneerof the Nile). "That was not a great memory," Espinoza said, recalling when the Triple Crown winner was upset in the Travers by Keen Ice (Curlin). The 53-year-old Hall of Fame jockey is hoping to make a better impression 10 years later as he is spending the summer at the Spa for the first ever. Espinoza, who owns 3,520 career victories, has been working the Saratoga...

SARATOGA SPRINGS - Next Wednesday, 2024 Horse of the Year & 'TDN Rising Star' Thorpedo Anna (Fast Anna) is expected to be in Saratoga. Trainer Kenny McPeek said she will ship to the Spa from Kentucky along with Mystik Dan (Goldencents), last year's GI Kentucky Derby winner. Thorpedo Anna is coming off a three-length win in the GII, $500,000 Fleur de Lis Stakes at Churchill Downs last Saturday. "She is fine, she is like a rocket ship," McPeek said by phone from Kentucky Thursday. "She loves her work; she loves...

"What's in a name?" Spurning Master Shakespeare and embracing anecdotal evidence, consider the tale of how Saratoga's Oklahoma Training Track got its name. Horsemen complained that the distance across Union Avenue to the main course was such a hike that it might as well be in Boomer Sooner land. Another piece from the past concerns the name of the Alabama S. Dating to 1872, the race was given that moniker after the Derby-winning owner William Cottrell of Mobile asked if it could be dubbed after his home state, instead of...

Favored to earn her first taste of Classic glory in the GI Kentucky Oaks in May, Godolphin's Wet Paint (Blame) could only manage a fourth-place finish behind stablemate Pretty Mischievous (Into Mischief). Fast forward through a runner-up effort in Ellis's Monomoy Girl S. last month followed by a trek to upstate New York, the bay finally bagged her own Grade I, taking Saturday's Coaching Club American Oaks at Saratoga. "She's a super consistent filly who always comes running," said trainer Brad Cox, who won the 2018 renewal of the Oaks...

Set to lineup as the 5-2 morning-line co-second choice this afternoon in the GI Coaching Club American Oaks at Saratoga, Hoosier Philly (Into Mischief) has scratched with a minor foot issue, her trainer Tom Amoss reported Saturday morning via Twitter. Amoss said, "Hoosier Philly was not herself this morning with a minor foot issue. Out of an abundance of caution, agreement with the state vets, & doing the right thing by her, she will be withdrawn from the CCAO. We look forward to getting back to the track in the...

Not just anyone could join their club. You had to possess status, refinement, wealth and charm. Oh, and the real test was, "The ability to drive four horses with grace and skill," which translated to holding the reigns in one fist--whew, tough. Founded in 1875, New York's Coaching Club had strict guidelines for membership, which included that you could not be involved in racing of any kind. Interesting that the CC's annual parade was replaced in 1917, the same year America entered The Great War, by a race for 3-year-old...

Trainer Todd Pletcher has confirmed Repole Stable and St. Elias Stable's MGISW Forte (Violence) for the GII Jim Dandy S. July 29 at Saratoga Race Course. The 3-year-old colt will use the race as a prep for the GI Travers S. Aug. 26, which the Hall of Famer won with Flower Alley [2005] and Stay Thirsty [2011]. "It was a tough call," said Pletcher. "We just felt like shipping up here, getting him used to the track, two Travers winners we previously had have done that." Pletcher added that Forte...

Sponsored by Alex Nichols Agency 8th-OP, $108K, Alw/OC, 4yo/up, f, 1 1/16m, 5:39 p.m. GIW MARACUJA begins her 4-year-old campaign Friday against an allowance field at Oaklawn Park. She returns off a six-month freshening following a fourth-place effort behind Clairiere (Curlin) in the GI Cotillion S. Sep. 25 at Parx, where she seemed poised to strike but ultimately weakened down the stretch. The gray/roan daughter of Honor Code makes her first trip to Oaklawn after racing exclusively on the East Coast in her career thus far. Her crowning achievement came...

No man an island, huh? Not so sure about that, after the last year or so, when even a family household has sometimes felt like a peninsula at best. So, the very last thing anyone wanted on returning to Saratoga, after being denied its unique balm of fellowship last year, was to hear "the Q word" yet again. A 21-day quarantine for horses stabled in Barn 86, after one of Jorge Abreu's fillies tested positive to EHV-1, must have felt like Groundhog Day for Abreu and neighbor Kenny McPeek. Here...