Saturday, March 29, 2003
Seven Four Seven heavy choice
today at Turfway
The Enquirer and wire reports
Sam Pollock's Seven Four Seven will be heavily favored to win her fourth straight race when she faces eight other fillies and mares in today's $50,000 Fairway Fun Stakes at Turfway Park.
The 11/16-mile race, the final stakes of the winter-spring meet, will be the featured 10th of 12 live races beginning at 1:10 p.m.
Seven Four Seven, 5, has been one of the highlights of a record-setting meet for trainer Bernie Flint and jockey Jason Lumpkins.
Flint needs one win to pass John Parisella's 1996 record of 40 wins, while Lumpkins needs seven to pass Kris Prather's 2001 meet record of 109 wins.
Seven Four Seven has won an allowance race and the Likely Exchange and Wintergreen Stakes this winter at Turfway. Overall, she has seven wins in 14 Turfway starts with two seconds and two thirds.
RIVER DOWNS: Recent outbreaks of equine herpes in Ohio and Kentucky have prompted the Cincinnati track to impose new restrictions on horses stabled there. Horses brought to River Downs when the track opens its backstretch for training today will be required to have a veterinarian-approved health certificate noting the horse's temperature within 24 hours.
Live racing begins April 12 and continues through Labor Day. Seventy horses confined for nine days because a strain of equine herpes was found in three horses at Turfway have been allowed to resume training.
DERBY DOINGS: Kafwain has been disqualified from the second-place money he earned in the Louisiana Derby because of an excessive amount of clenbuterol, Louisiana racing officials ruled.
Eclipse Award-winning trainer Bob Baffert didn't contest the ruling because doing so would have made Kafwain ineligible to race during the appeals process.
That would have kept the horse out of next week's Santa Anita Derby, a major prep for the Kentucky Derby.