Done shopping? Then you can get to work on Friday's two big carryovers: A 2-day, $159k headstart at Aqueduct, which reopens Friday after being dark since Dec.14, and a $227k carry at Hawthorne that has been building for 18 days. Here are the wintry lineups:
It's not as if there's a lot of parimutuel distraction between now and then. Six tracks (CRC, Pen, Pha, Sun, Tam, TuP) are open Tuesday but there's no Thoroughred racing scheduled anywhere in the U.S. either Wednesday or Thursday, when even the OTB's are closed in New York.
The early pp's are up for both Aqu and Haw and the two seeded sequences look like skullbusters. Full fields before scratches, two maiden claimers at Aqueduct, and three straight $4k or $5k claiming filly sprints at Hawthorne. Get cracking.
Friday is also opening day at Santa Anita, where a nine-race card includes three straight stakes races starting with the 6th: 12 Cal-bred 2-year-olds in the $125k California Breeders Champions Stakes; Gio Ponti vs. 12 in the $100k Sir Beaufort for 3-year-old turf milers; and seven 3-year-olds -- including G1 winners Colonel John, Georgie Boy and Into Mischief -- in the G1 $250k Malibu.
Into Mischief earned a Beyer Speed Figure of 95 winning last year's Hollywood Futurity by 1 1/4 lengths from Colonel John. This past Saturday, Pioneerofthenile won that race but earned a Beyer of only 86 -- the lowest in at least the last 19 years, a span during which the average winning fig has been a 99 -- after running the 1 1/16 miles in 1:41.95. Half an hour later, the older G2 winner Zappa ran the same distance in 1:40.65 winning a N3x allowance race, earning a 99.
Pioneerofthenile matched the 86 he received in the Breeders' Cup Juvenile, when he ran fifth, beaten 2 3/4 lengths, by Midshipman.
The most impressive winner at Hollywood last Saturday was the 3-year-old Rail Trip, a Jay Em Ess/Ron Ellis/Jump Start colt who won his Nov. 7 debut in 1:07.94 for 6f, good for a splashy 102 Beyer. Rail Trip returned Saturday to score by an identical 3 1/2-length margin, this time getting 6.5f in 1:13.92, which translated to a 101 Beyer.
