Although no race has been confirmed, trainer D. Wayne Lukas is actively preparing 2009 Kentucky Derby winner Mine That Bird for the gelding’s first start of the year. The four-year-old had a six- furlong workout Tuesday morning at Churchill Downs.

“I am not sure where we’ll go,” Lukas said. “He is nominated to the Salvatore Mile (July 3 at Monmouth Park), which is a nice option. He is nominated to everything but the Tokyo Fair. Our goal is the Whitney (August 7 at Saratoga). We are going to dive right into the deep end.”

Owned by Double Eagle Ranch and Buena Suerte Equine, Mine That Bird breezed three-quarters of a mile in 1:13 with Calvin Borel riding. This was the fifth work for the gelding since being transferred to Lukas. Mine That Bird galloped out seven-furlongs in 1:27 1/5.

“When they started training horses 300 years ago, this is what they had in mind,” Lukas noted. “His last quarter was in 23 and 2 and his last eighth, it had to be 11 and change. He was flying.”

Mine That Bird last raced in the Breeders’ Cup Classic last November when he was ninth to Zenyatta. The four-year-old’s last win was the Run for the Roses on May 2, 2009.
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by Brian Zipse (ZATT)

Like a shot he is off. And then, he is gone again. Blink your eyes and you may miss him. I was able to catch a glimpse of him on Preakness Day, mind you, it was only a glimpse.

“Who was that horse?” I heard someone say as he rolled by.

He has been lighting up tracks both day and night since his debut last September, zipping through sophomore stakes as if they are his own personal playgrounds. Some lucky fans in West Virginia were lucky enough to see him on Saturday night. If only briefly.

The horse is Comedero, and he has done it again, routing six rivals in the $400,000 Red Legend Stakes on Saturday at Charles Town Races & Slots.
“This could be the best three-year-old in the country!“ exclaimed Charles Town track announcer, Jeff Cernik, as Comedero opened up by eight or nine lengths early in the lane.

Strong words probably, but it is becoming more doubtful that anyone in this crop can stay with him at least for the first six panels. Comedero has romped home in each of his five starts this year, all of them stakes, and with a combined winning margin of just about 30 lengths.

Surely that number would be higher if not for jockey Robby Albarado gearing him down late in the Red Legend score.

Comedero, was sent straight to the front in the richest sprint race for three-year-olds. He raced unopposed as he lengthened his lead with disdainful ease. The huge margin allowed Albarado to peek back, and wrap up his charge well before the wire. Final margin over Mylilsecret was 2 ¼ lengths, but it no doubt could have been much larger.

Coming off a win in the Grade 3 Chick Lang Stakes at Pimlico most recently, the bay gelding, in the pink silks, improved his career record to eight wins out of nine races, with his only coming in a poor effort at the extended distance of a mile at Remington Park as a juvenile.

He has already surpassed half a million in earnings. In each of those eight wins, no horse has been able to come close to Comedero in the stretch. The fleet Arkansas-bred is a son of Posse and Pawnee Patti, by Sir Richard Lewis. He has now won seven stakes, including tow at Charles Town, where he had previously accounted tor the Blue and Gold Stakes by nine lengths April 17.

Seeing Comedero become this good can be no surprise. After all he was bred in the Thoroughbred hotbed of Arkansas and has exclusively run in all the big race states of Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arkansas, West Virginia, and Maryland. I kid of course, these are not places that we usually expect champions, but a champion sprinter is what Comedero may very well become. Time to bring on the big boys.

As Bloomberg.com reported, scientists of the University of Dublin announced last week that such testing is
actually in the works. By identifying variants of the “muscle mass-regulating myostatin gene” it has become
possible to “predict a horse’s optimum racing distance.” For 1000 euros ($1400) and a blood sample, owners
can now tell whether their horse’s myostatin levels will equip it best to sprint, run middle distances, or
go long in marathons. The scientists are quick to point out, however, that this is not a test to determine
future champions; it is meant to determine “‘what your horse is good at, not how good he will be.’” So perhaps
we are not yet on the threshold of quickly identifying the next Rachel Alexandra from a crop of foals, but we
can at least determine which crops should be matched against one another. Still a pretty impressive step forward,
and the first ever test for Thoroughbreds that correlates genetic variability with athletic potential.
by Corinne Mehas

The Turf Publicists of America has named the human connections of 2009 Breeders’ Cup Classic winner Zenyatta as the recipients of the organization’s Big Sport of Turfdom Award, the organization announced on Thursday.

The recipients will include Zenyatta’s owners, Jerry and Ann Moss; her trainer, John Shirreffs, and his wife, Dottie, who is the Mosses’ racing manager; and the mare’s jockey, Mike Smith, the publicist’s group said. Zenyatta raced five times this year and won all five starts, culminating with the Classic win over 11 male horses on Nov. 7 at Santa Anita. She is being retired with an undefeated record of 14 wins and career earnings of $5,474,580, a record for a filly or mare.

The Big Sport of Turfdom award is given annually by the Turf Publicists of America”to a person or group of people who enhances coverage of Thoroughbred racing through cooperation with the media and Thoroughbred racing publicists” The organization had previously given the award to the human connections of a specific horse in 1996, when it designated “Team Cigar” for the award. Cigar was a two-time Horse of the Year campaigned by Allen Paulson, trained by Bill Mott, and ridden by Jerry Bailey.

The recipients will be presented the award on Dec. 8 at a luncheon held in conjunction with the University of Arizona Symposium on Racing in Tucson, Ariz.

SBG Global RacebookThe California Horse Racing Board said testing was completed Tuesday and all the samples came back clear from the UC Davis laboratory.

Out-of-competition testing was also done on 25 percent of all horses pre-entered in the Breeders’ Cup World Championships, with smples analyzed in Europe for international entries.

The tests checked for more than 45 anabolic steroids and hundreds of other prohibited drugs.

Like any other sport horse racing is no different, testing negative and being clean are two different things.

As the old stock car racing goes there are two kinds of racers, cheaters and losers.