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6 days ago | 
attheraces.com | David Grening
By David Grening, Daily Racing FormFierceness and White Abarrio will line-up side by side for their showdown in Saturday’s Grade 1, $1 million Metropolitan Handicap at Saratoga. Fierceness, the 2024 Travers winner and 2-year-old champion of 2023, drew the rail in the Met Mile, which drew a field of only five, but four of those horses have combined to win 13 of their last 16 starts.
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6 days ago | 
attheraces.com | David Grening
By David Grening, Daily Racing FormJournalism had always struck his trainer Michael McCarthy as a horse that could handle the three-races-in-five-weeks rigors of the Triple Crown. On Sunday, after watching him put in a terrific workout over Saratoga’s main track, McCarthy will give Journalism the chance to prove him right.
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1 week ago | 
attheraces.com | David Grening
By David Grening, Daily Racing FormTrainer Bill Mott said the decision to skip the Preakness with Kentucky Derby winner Sovereignty doesn’t put any more pressure on him to win the Belmont Stakes than otherwise already exists. “It would be the same,” Mott said Thursday morning outside his Saratoga barn.
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1 week ago | 
attheraces.com | David Grening
By David Grening, Daily Racing FormThe odds were already stacked against the European shipper Heart of Honor going into the Preakness Stakes at Pimlico. But any chance the horse may have had was hampered when he acted up some in the gate and broke slowly away from it. Heart of Honor finished fifth, beaten 8 3/4 lengths by Journalism, in the nine-horse field. It was a respectable enough effort for trainer Jamie Osborne to continue on toward the June 7 Belmont Stakes.
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2 weeks ago | 
attheraces.com | David Grening
By David Grening, Daily Racing FormRodriguez and Baeza both turned in serious workouts Friday morning at Santa Anita in preparation for scheduled starts in the $2 million Belmont Stakes at Saratoga on June 7. Rodriguez, the Wood Memorial winner who scratched from the Kentucky Derby due to a foot issue, went seven furlongs in 1:24.80. Santa Anita clocker Dane Nelson caught Rodriguez’s first five furlongs in 59.60 seconds.
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2 weeks ago | 
attheraces.com | David Grening
By David Grening, Daily Racing FormQatar Racing has acquired part-interest in Shisospicy. The multiple turf sprint stakes winning 3-year-old filly will be pointed to the Group 1 Commonwealth Stakes at Royal Ascot on June 20, her connections announced Tuesday. Qatar joins ownership of Shisospicy with Morplay Racing, the racing operation of Rich and Josh Mendez, which put out a statement on the sale and plans on Tuesday.
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2 weeks ago | 
attheraces.com | David Grening
By David Grening, Daily Racing FormMcAfee, runner-up to Hill Road in the Grade 3 Peter Pan at Aqueduct two weeks ago, will make his next start in the Grade 3, $500,000 Ohio Derby at Thistledown on June 21, Jake Ballis, managing partner of the group that owns majority interest in the horse, said Monday. McAfee, a half-brother to reigning Horse of the Year Thorpedo Anna, is not Triple Crown-nominated and it would cost a $50,000 supplemental fee to run in the Belmont Stakes.
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3 weeks ago | 
attheraces.com | David Grening
By David Grening, Daily Racing FormThe connections of Preakness winner Journalism would like to run their horse in the Belmont Stakes on June 7 at Saratoga. As they did before the Preakness, they will wait for Journalism to indicate that he’s on board with that plan. Journalism could ship to Saratoga this week while his connections go through the same monitoring process they did for the Preakness after the horse finished second in the Kentucky Derby.
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3 weeks ago | 
attheraces.com | David Grening
By David Grening, Daily Racing FormIn deep stretch of Saturday’s 150th Preakness Stakes, trainer Michael McCarthy thought he was going to witness history repeating itself from two weeks ago in the Kentucky Derby. Journalism, the athletic horse McCarthy trains, decided to rewrite history, overcoming significant trouble in upper stretch under Umberto Rispoli to run down a seemingly home-free Gosger and win the 150th Preakness at soon-to-be-demolished Pimlico by a half-length.
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3 weeks ago | 
attheraces.com | David Grening
By David Grening, Daily Racing FormEven 24 years after she won the Grade 1 Test Stakes at Saratoga, Victory Ride will forever be the standard by which female sprinters who come into trainer Rusty Arnold’s barn will be measured. Perhaps Echo Sound has what it takes to stack up. A winner of three of four starts as a 2-year-old, Echo Sound came off a 167-day layoff to win Friday’s Grade 3, $150,000 Miss Preakness Stakes by two lengths at Pimlico.
