Noted: February 16
– Round Pond makes her first start since last July in an optional claiming sprint for older fillies at Oaklawn today. Trainer John Servis had planned for Round Pond to begin her four-year-old campaign in the March 11 Azeri Breeders’ Cup, but changed his mind after the filly worked six furlongs in 1:13 on February 3. “After this work the other day, I’m thinking, ‘How am I going to hold the filly on the ground for another month?'” Servis said. “I had no plans on running her before then. It was some kind of work, buddy.” Round Pond isn’t the only member of the distaff division returning to the track this week: Splendid Blended, retired last summer and scheduled to be bred, instead returns on Saturday in the Hurricane Bertie at Gulfstream. Also on Saturday, the Grade 1-winning Lousiana-bred Happy Ticket will make her first start since the Breeders’ Cup Distaff at Evangeline Downs.
– Attendance, handle, and field size are up at Aqueduct. “Off-season racing, once an enterprise at best grim and often unpalatable, appears to be coming of age.”
– “How many ways does this stink?,” Jay Hovdey asks of the USDA decision to allow the continued slaughter of horses in the United States, despite legislation passed with overwhelming support in congress last fall to end the practice by de-funding USDA inspectors at the slaugherhouses. The decision has angered lawmakers who supported the legislation, and on Tuesday, several humane groups and individuals filed a lawsuit challenging the decision.
