Yesterday and today: July 6 racing highlights
Zipessa took the Dr. James Penny Memorial Stakes at Parx Racing. Photo by Taylor Ejdys/EQUI-PHOTO.
From Staff Reports
YESTERDAY’S NEWS: FOUR FOR FARRO
Trainer Patricia Farro is running away from her rivals in the Parx Racing training standings.
The veteran conditioner, who has finished in the top 15 nationally in wins in each of the last two years, added four more Tuesday to bring her total for 2016 to 59 wins in Bensalem. Mario Serey, Jr., second in the Parx standings, has 36.
Yesterday, she teamed up with jockey Pierre Hernandez Ortega for all four victories, three in claiming company and one against starter allowance foes.
Farro took the day’s opener and its nightcap, both in claiming company. In the lid-lifter, Twin Lights, a horse she also owns, posted a 1 3/4 length win against $7,500 rivals. Twin Lights paid $14.60 to win. In the day’s final race, Hernandez Ortega and M J’s Knight came from the clouds, closing from as many as 17 lengths back to defeat $7,500 foes by nearly four lengths.
In between those two, Spirit in the Nite was up in time to win the fourth — yet another $7,500 event — by a half-length after splitting rivals. Spirit in the Night paid $20.80 to win. And Uncle Hen posted a dominant, 10-length score over starter allowance rivals in the seventh race as the lukewarm 2.60-1 favorite.
Overall this season, Farro has 79 wins (59 at Parx) from 454 starters. She has over $2.3 million in purse earnings.
[su_divider top=”no” style=”double” size=”9″]BY THE NUMBERS
- HANDLE:
- Parx Racing: $1,760,546
- CLAIMS:
- Parx Racing: 4
- MULTIPLE WINNERS
- JOCKEYS
- Pierre Hernandez Ortega, 4 wins at Parx
- Joshua Navarro, 2 wins at Parx
- TRAINERS
- Patricia Farro, 4 wins at Parx
- Ramon Preciado, 2 wins at Parx
- JOCKEYS
LOOK AHEAD: TODAY’S RACING
- Tracks in action today: Delaware Park and Penn National
- Delaware Park hosts the Christiana Stakes this afternoon. It’s race eight and has drawn a full field of 13, with My Impression the 3-1 morning line favorite. Click here for more on the Christiana.
- Trainer Linda Rice is scheduled to send out three of the eight runners in the fifth race at Delaware, a $34,000 maiden test, in the form of the 1-1A entry of Judge Roy Bean and City Traveler, lined at 9-2, and #3 Driving Me Crazy (8-5). The latter was second in each of his two starts, one at Laurel Park and one at Pimlico. He most recently was a well-beaten runner-up to Nate’s Tizzy, who took a Delaware allowance in his follow-up, back in May. Gabriel Saez will ride.
- A big field of 11 is set to gather for Penn National’s second race, a turf test for PA-bred claiming horses that have never won two races. Sour Lemon Drop (3-1) is the lukewarm morning line favorite; the Lemon Drop Kid filly is trained by Patricia Farro and will be ridden by Emmanuel Esquivel — but she’s winless in five turf tries and just one-for-13 overall. Indeed, it’s a race full of horses with dubious records, which leads the handicapper to look at runners like Jonathan Sheppard trainee Adulating (8-1), who has won one of three turf starts (one of six overall); Richard Beattie’s Indigo Pearls (9-2), one of four on the lawn; or even Flint Stites’s Little Brown Sugar (12-1), who won her only career start to date, though on the dirt. Little Brown Sugar’s dam, Sugar Doll, has the unusual distinction of having won four career races — all at Del Mar.
