Racing News

A sharp five-furlong drill on Monday at Del Mar earned Bayern a trip to Monmouth Park this coming weekend for a start in the Grade 1 William Hill Haskell Invitational.

The Daily Racing Form reported that prior to Monday’s work, trainer Bob Baffert had been debating between either sending Bayern to the Haskell, or waiting and starting him in the G1 King’s Bishop at Saratoga in August. After seeing Bayern work five furlongs in 59.80, Baffert said that the Haskell would be the colt’s next start.

“It was a Haskell move,” Baffert told the DRF. “If I passed that race, I was just going to wait for the King’s Bishop. He earned his way today. He went really nice.”

West Point Thoroughbreds' Kentucky Derby runner-up Commanding Curvecould make his first start since his ninth-place finish in the Belmont Stakes (gr. I) in the July 25 Curlin Stakes at Saratoga Race Course.

Though he has earned $542,434 in eight starts, the 3-year-old Master Commandridgling who finished second in the Kentucky Derby Presented by Yum! Brands (gr. I) at 38-1 odds and third in the Louisiana Derby (gr. II) still has one win to his credit. The 1 1/8-mile Curlin is for 3-year-olds that have not won a graded stakes over a mile in 2014.

Trained by Dallas Stewart, Commanding Curve will break from the inside post under Shaun Bridgmohan while carrying 117 pounds in the field of 10. The colt has been training weekly, including a quick five-furlong breeze in 1:01 at Churchill Downs July 6, the third-best among 21 working that distance.

Better Lucky, last by more than a dozen lengths after a half-mile, came flying down the stretch to catch Grace Hall at the finish to win the $100,000 Shine Again Stakes (VIDEO) by a head atSaratoga Race Course July 21.

Grace Hall finished second, a half-length in front of My Miss Aurelia, the 2011 champion 2-year-old filly who was making her first start in more than 16 months. Pacesetter Bridgehamptonfinished another length back in fourth. The field was diminished by the scratches of Angel's Glory and Toasting.

Trained by Tom Albertrani for Godolphin Racing, Better Lucky ran seven furlongs in 1:22.56 on a fast main track and paid $12.20 to win. The daughter of Ghostzapper   has six wins and eight placings and earned $993,950 in 17 lifetime starts.

Willis Horton's Will Take Charge breezed five furlongs July 21 in anticipation of his next start in the Aug. 2 Whitney Invitational Handicap (gr. I).

Will Take Charge, a 4-year-old Unbridled's Song colt who was 3-year-old champion male of 2013, worked five furlongs in 1:01.02 on the Oklahoma training track. Trainer D. Wayne Lukas said the colt will have one more work before the $1.5 million Whitney atSaratoga Race Course.

"I took him out to breeze a little bit; he looked good," Lukas told New York Racing Association officials.

Will Take Charge has raced five times this year in top company with a victory in the Oaklawn Handicap (gr. II) and second-place finishes in three grade I events: the Donn, Santa Anita, and Stephen Foster handicaps.

Jerry Schemmel considers himself one of the lucky ones.

Not solely because he was one of the 184 who survived the crash of United Airlines Flight 232, but also because he's been able to use that experience to turn his life around and do what he can to help others.

"The crash completely reshaped me. I'm a different person because of it," said Schemmel, 54, who lives in Littleton, Colo., and has been the radio play-by-play voice of the Colorado Rockies baseball team for the past five years. He had been the radio voice of the Denver Nuggets basketball team for 18 years before that.

Fellow Flight 232 survivor and Olympic equestrian Michael Matz says he’s tried to keep the crash in Sioux City 25 years ago from negatively affecting the rest of his life. He was lauded as a hero for leading brothers Travis and Jody Roth, then 9 and 14, and sister Melissa Radcliffe, then 12, out of the plane. He went back into the plane and pulled an 11-month-old girl from a luggage compartment.

In the years since, Matz has won an Olympic silver medal in show jumping and trained the 2006 Kentucky Derby winner, Barbaro.

The 2-year-old pacing and trotting colts will make their second Ontario Sires Stakes Grassroots appearance Monday night (July 21) at two different Ontario racetracks. The pacers will headline Grand River’s card while Mohawk features the trotters.

Both groups have one Grassroots test under their harnesses and this is usually when you see movement between the Gold and Grassroots divisions depending upon performance in the first stakes of the season. Many horses who perform well at the Grassroots level will have a bump up to the Gold division.

However, that’s not happening among the rookie colts this season. In the trotting division’s first OSS Grassroots event of the year at Georgian Downs there were five divisions and all five of those winners have been entered at Mohawk. In fact, three of the winners, Call Me Richard, Hemi Seelster and Benvenuti, will face off side by side in the third of six C$18,000 contests at the Campbellville oval.

It was mission accomplished for Mission Brief, who was “in a world of her own” according to track announcer Ken Warkentin, as she finished in a world-record tying 1:52.2, way ahead of the field, to win the $352,050 Merrie Annabelle for 2-year-old trotting fillies on Saturday (Aug. 2) at The Meadowlands.

Mission Brief (Yannick Gingras), who won the New Jersey Sire Stakes final, was first to the lead in :28, with Livininthefastlane (Brian Sears) behind her and Onda Di Mare (Tim Tetrick) in third as they hit the quarter.

That trip headed to the half, when Lock Down Lindy (Scott Zeron) came from fourth to challenge the leaders. She lived in second down the backstretch to the :56.2 half and on to the 1:24.3 three-quarters, with Mission Brief and Gingras still with a firm hold on the lead.

Two-time reigning Horse of the Year Wise Dan worked five furlongs in 1:02.04 on Saratoga's main track Aug. 2 as trainer Charlie LoPresti continues to weigh options for a comeback race.

After making one of the best showings ever by an American a few weeks ago in the World Cup of Amateur Racing in Finland, where he won two of the nine events in the competition, Steve “You’re Never Too” Oldford returned to the good ole USA and emerged victorious in a Billings Trot at the Fowlerville, Michigan Fair on Monday (July 21).

On that beautiful summer afternoon at the Wolverine State’s award winning Fowlerville Fair, Oldford catch-drove trainer June Du Russel’s Rub A Dud to a neck victory over What Do You Want and driver Larry “Overhand Serve” Steenbergen in a time of 2:05.1. The show money went to “Lawbook Larry” Farley with his own Rewrite The Rules.

“I had the three hole and sent my trotter to the lead and we opened up daylight,” Oldford said. “We had six or seven lengths all the way until the stretch where Larry (Steenbergen) came charging but we held him off to win it.”

The 2-year-old pacer Gordo astonished the racing fans at the Bedford (PA) Fair on Monday afternoon (July 28) when he scorched to a 1:57 victory in a Pennsylvania Fair Sire Stakes event.

Gordo missed both the all-time Bedford track record and the national season’s record for age, sex, and gait by only two-fifths of a second. Driver Steve Schoeffel sent Gordo right to the front and blitzed amazing fractions of :28.2, :58.2 and 1:26.2 en route to the sensational victory.

A son of McArdle out of the Blissfull Hall mare Blissard Of Oz (who had only one winner in four living foals pre-Gordo), the fast freshman was bred by Perretti Farms.

Longines Kentucky Oaks (gr. I) winnerUntapable, a perfect four-for-four in 2014, on July 21 put in her final breeze for the $1 million William Hill Haskell Invitational (gr. I).

Her connections plan to send the 3-year-old filly to Monmouth Park July 24 in advance of the July 24 race in which she will face males.

Ron Winchell's homebred daughter ofTapit    worked an easy four furlongs in 50.28 under exercise rider Mike Callaham on the Saratoga Race Course's Oklahoma training track.

Jockey Jane Magrell won her 1,000th race July 20 when Box Office Smash won an allowance race at ThistleDown Racino in Ohio.

Magrell, 50, lives in Atwater, Ohio, and has been a jockey for 28 years and, according to the ThistleDown publicity office, has continued riding despite injuries that have included a broken hip and broken legs.

Owned by Joe Cheeks and Luigi Damasceno, Box Office Smash is trained by Kitty Cheeks, daughter of the late trainer Don Rice. Rice trained the first winner ridden by Magrell in her career and she has been associated with the family ever since.

Stakes winners Favorite Tale andChoctaw Chuck are the 121-pound co-highweights among seven 3-year-olds entered for the $100,000 Quick Call Stakes at Saratoga Race Course.

The July 24 feature at 5 1/2 furlongs over the Mellon Turf Course is the ninth race on the 10-race card with an approximate post time of 4:42 p.m. (EDT).

A synthetic track specialist, Choctaw Chuck comes into the Quick Call off an 8 1/2-length romp in allowance company over the Tapeta main track atPresque Isle Downs. Three races back, the gelded son of Bwana Charlie, trained by Kevin Rice for Clyde Rice, won the Tom Ridge Stakes at the Pennsylvania track by running the six furlongs in 1:09.46. Choctaw Chuck, who will be ridden by Taylor Rice, has won three of seven starts and earned $104,300. All three victories have come from five synthetic track starts.

Maggi Moss' Kiss to Remember, one-for-one on the turf, will seek her second stakes victory in the $200,000 Indiana Grand Stakes for 3-year-old fillies at Indiana Grand Race Course July 23.

The Indiana Grand, at one mile, is one of two grass stakes on the afternoon program. The other is the $100,000 Girls Incorporated of Shelbyville Shelby County Stakes for fillies and mares at 1 1/16 miles.

Both stakes have drawn full fields of 12 with two also-eligible runners. The featured Indiana Grand is race nine on a 10-race program than begins at 2:05 p.m. EDT.