A dramatic pinhooking score with a colt that sold for only $1,500 as a weanling was the highlight of the third day of the Ocala Breeders' Sales Company's August yearling auction. The son of Candy Stripes brought $170,000 to top Wednesday's open session.
Hall of Fame trainer Allen Jerkens, longtime New York Racing Association press office employee Shirley Day Smith, and Dallas Morning News columnist Gary West have been named 2001 award winners by the National Turf Writers Association.
Last weekend Bobby Frankel won three graded stakes races with three horses. This weekend he'll have three horses in one graded stakes race, the Del Mar Handicap (gr. IIT). Frankel is to saddle Northern Quest, Super Quercus, and Timboroa in Del Mar's feature Saturday.
Trainer Jay Robbins is ecstatic about Tiznows return to the track in the $500,000 Woodward Stakes (gr. I) Sept. 8 at Belmont.
A field of six 2-year-old fillies will take the post in Sunday's $250,000 Del Mar Debutant (gr. I), going seven furlongs on the seaside oval's main track.
Sunday's $350,000 Philip H. Iselin Handicap (G2) is likely to draw a field of five or six older horses with widely varying profiles. Some, like Sir Bear, are old pros in the stakes ranks with nothing to prove. Others, like First Lieutenant, are looking for their first added-money score and credibility in the handicap ranks.
Sent off at 25-1 odds, Italian-trained Super Tassa posted a stunning upset Wednesday in the Aston Upthorpe Yorkshire Oaks (Eng-I) at York, England.
<i>By Sean Clancy</i><br><i>From The Saratoga Special, reprinted with permission</i>
The Thoroughbred Corporation's Point Given, even-money morning line favorite in for Saturday's grade 1, $1 million Travers, drew post seven in the field of nine.
Super Tassa sprung a major upset in racing in England Wednesday, taking the Yorkshire Oaks (Eng-I) at odds of 25-1.
Shane Sellers will ride for the first time since a January spill put his career in jeopardy when he gets aboard Momentous in the $75,000 Prairie Meadows Oaks for 3-year-old fillies.
<i>By Sean Clancy</i><br><i>From The Saratoga Special, reprinted with permission</i>
Grade II stakes-placed Mojave Moon, whose dam, French champion East of the Moon, is a half-sister to major sire Kingmambo, will enter stud at the Boniface family's Bonita Farm near Darlington, Md.
