Beginning of the End

- It’s the last week of the Belmont meeting, and it’s funny how the field sizes seem to have grown as the end of the meet approaches, whereas it’s generally the other way around. Still, the card consisted mostly of the races that have managed to fill all meet - maidens, state-breds, and turf. Edgar Prado rode three more winners, padding his insurmountable lead and seemingly rubbing it in. Training leaders Bill Mott and Juan Rodriguez/Richard Dutrow went head and head as the latter temporarily tied the race by taking the 4th with a 2 yo NY-bred filly Caught Inthe Zip (City Zip). But two races later, Mott scored with Pimentinha (Wild Event), a 3 yo filly cutting back to 6 furlongs on the turf and getting it in 1:08.39.

Bruce Levine put over a first timer at 17-1 in another division of the 2 yo state-bred filly affair. Doll Baby is a David Cassidy-bred, and she’s by Citidancer (Dixieland Band) out of a Desert Wine mare. She has inbreeding to Northern Dancer and Hoist the Flag; she’s a half to another winning Cassidy product, Half Heaven, and her second dam is the granddam of the durable millionaire Continental Red.

And yet another winner for the Castle Village/Billy Turner team, with Seaside Salute taking the 7th.

- Wild Desert’s lack of published workouts, just two between the Arkansas Derby in April and his win in the Queen’s Plate got the old wink-and-nod treatment, but now it’s no laughing matter to racing officials in New York and New Jersey, both conducting investigations of possible chicanery and deception. In fact, the racing secretary at Monmouth, where one of the workouts was listed at, says "We have no record of the horse shipping in or out of Monmouth Park." He won the Queen’s Plate and his owners bragged of making big money at the mutuel windows. Wild Desert was transferred to Richard Dutrow after Oaklawn and was in the care of Bobby Frankel for the Queen’s Plate. "I don't know anything about it.....They asked me to run the horse in my name in Canada. That's what I did. That's all I know." [Daily Racing Form]