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Tom Law 
A few days before he ran Wise Dan in the Firecracker Handicap, Charlie LoPresti showed up at his Rice Road barn at Keeneland with a scale and a task in mind. He was dealing with the tough impost of 128 pounds the Horse of the Year was assigned and wanted to know what the difference between race day and every day would be in the 1-mile turf test.
Put the feed tub in front of West Hills Giant and watch him dive in with purpose. Put him on the outside in a race and watch him devour the ground. Put him down on the inside and try to get him through a hole and watch him hesitate. Such is life for trainer John Terranova dealing with the Frost Giant colt. The first two attributes are positive, the third an obvious negative. The negative almost caught up with West Hills Giant in Wednesday’s $100,000 Cab Calloway division of the New York Stallion Stakes.
Fireworks never went off, records didn’t fall, and yet the Fasig-Tipton Saratoga sale of selected yearlings will undoubtedly be remembered for years to come as a true success.
Sustainable living is quickly becoming one of the more popular lifestyles in the world today, yet it’s been pretty prominent in the Thoroughbred industry for generations. The best breed-to-race operations will, from time to time, strategically put some of their more well-bred and athletic horses up for sale, letting the commercial market dictate their value and at the same time bring in some capital to use for any number of things.
Al Stall stood outside the gap at the five-eighths pole on the main track Sunday. He stood alone, watched his horse train, and walked home alone. He didn’t spend the previous night at a fancy Saratoga restaurant celebrating some achievement or entertaining owners. Instead, the trainer spent Saturday at Mountaineer Park in Chester, W.Va., cheering Departing across the finish line way in front of the field for the Grade 2 West Virginia Derby.
The lime green and black silks of the Klein family are familiar on the Kentucky and Midwest circuits and pop up in stakes around the country from time to time. They’ve been carried to victory in several stakes by the likes of Allamerican Bertie, May Gator and Outofthebox to name just a few.
Nothing really bothers Bahamian Squall, aside from a little soap on his nose and maybe the bugs flying around his head earlier this week while grazing in the courtyard of the stakes barn at Saratoga Race Course. The colt’s so laid back at times that it wasn’t a hard call for David Fawkes to gas up his truck, hook up the trailer and make the day-long ride from South Florida to Saratoga to run in today’s Grade 1 Alfred G. Vanderbilt Handicap with his latest sprinting star. It’s a trip Fawkes made before and he knows what types of horses can handle it and what types can’t.
Nothing’s ever been completely easy for Assateague. The filly by Stormy Atlantic battled physical issues for more than a year. A spur in a knee that eventually required surgery derailed not the end of her 2-year-old campaign and also wreaked havoc on her 3-year-old season. She’s always battled mental issues. A tendency to be rank, to run off or just be downright unsettled in the early and middle stages led to her undoing in most her defeats.
Robby Albarado got a leg up on a gray filly to breeze a half mile for Dale Romans during the fast-paced organized chaos that is turf-workout time on the Oklahoma training track not really knowing what to expect.
Fort Larned was not the horse he would become by year’s end as Ian Wilkes prepared him for last year’s Whitney Invitational Handicap.
