This weeks 10th race feature at Minnesota is The Rich Crown Special stakes for 3 year olds going 9 furlongs on the Supertoy7 Marshall turf course. While a $50,000 purse is up for grabs only a small field of 4 have entered this week, perhaps choosing not to run their young horses in the sub arctic temperatures here this weekend in Minnesota. While the turf has been listed as firm, insiders say that it appears to be more like green ice than anything else and whoever has the right shoes on for this race may well end up the victor.<\/P>
Let’s take a look at today’s field:<\/P>
1)BASESTEALER(KY)—3\/2—<\/STRONG>yunkai sends this colt out of DISTORTED HUMOR with a record of 6-4-0-1 and lifetime earnings of $122,756. He is out of the he-mare BRANDON’S GIFT(IRE) who was 8\/29 at the track. This 55th divisional ranked colt races for Given’s Fire and Blood stables based at the GR Simsters. After a 3rd place debut on the dirt this colt was switched to the turf and proceeded to win 4 of 5 starts on the lawn. His only loss came in The Grade I High Flyer Stakes where he was outrun but he did pick up a stakes win to close off his 2 year old season in The Wish Air(IRE) Challenge in Rhode Island where he posted his lifetime best 87 speed rating over the 8 furlong race. Predominantly races as a stalker and will be up close to the front today with the short field in this race. The rider for today’s race will be Friar (17.3%).\u00a0\u00a0 PROJECTED SPEED RATING—85.<\/STRONG><\/P> 2)MACHS BAND(KY)—3\/2—<\/STRONG>doctahg1 sends this colt out of DIXIELAND BAND with a record of 4-3-0-0 and lifetime earnings of $80,220. He is out of the he-mare MACHPASSER who was 7\/21 at the track. This 198th divisional ranked colt races out of the Dentition stables based over at Del Penn National. This colt won 3 allowance races in 4 starts with his only loss coming in The Grade III Flying Saucer Stakes in Ontario where he was outrun. He posted his lifetime best 89 speed rating last time out and will probably use his closing abilities to run down the leaders in the stretch today. The rider for today’s race will be E R Cothill (14.1%).\u00a0 PROJECTED SPEED RATING—86.<\/STRONG><\/P> 3)ROCK COLLECTOR(JPN)—9\/2—<\/STRONG>northsider sends this colt out of ROCK OF GIBRALTAR(IRE) with a record of 8-1-0-6 and lifetime earnings of $62,991. He is out of the mare STARK PROSPECT who was 5\/21 at the track and this is the only foal on record to date. This 337th divisional ranked colt races for the Citation stables based locally right here at Minnesota Downs. Well after winning his 2nd lifetime start to break his maiden this colt has finished 3rd in 6 straight starts, usually in small fields. He posted his lifetime best 79 speed rating last time out and that mark does put him behind the others in this field today but the PP charts suggest that perhaps another 3rd place finish may be a sure bet so as a result Minnesota Downs will not be accepting any show wagering on this race today. This stalker will try to keep up in this race today but will need to improve his speed ratings to have a shot at the winners circle at the end of the race. The rider for today’s race will be Ritorto (10.2%).\u00a0 PROJECTED SPEED RATING—77.<\/STRONG><\/P> 4)NEW BLOOD(KY)—5\/2—<\/STRONG>dundey5 sends this colt out of BORREGO with a record of 8-2-1-3 and lifetime earnings of $37,472. He is out of the mare MISS INDY who was 3\/25 at the track and this is the only foal on record to date. This divisional unranked colt races for Dundey Acres that are based right here in the backstretch at Minnesota Downs. A pair of allowance turf wins were made by this colt last year after running between both surfaces and he did have top 3 finishes in both of his stakes starts last year as well. He posted his lifetime best 86 speed rating last time out and usually runs in a closing style so this short field today will not be much help to him. It should be noted that both of his wins came against larger fields where the pace may have been a bit more honest to chase in the stetch drive. Still his last figure fits here today so we shall wait to see what happens. The rider for today’s race will be Bowen (17.1%).\u00a0 PROJECTED SPEED RATING—82.<\/STRONG><\/P> NOTE #3 ROCK COLLECTOR(JPN) AND #4 NEW BLOOD(KY) ARE BOTH ELIGIBLE FOR THE 200 CREDIT MINNESOTA DOWN RESIDENCY PURSE SUPPLEMENT SHOULD THEY WIN THIS RACE TODAY.<\/P> WHAT’S HAPPENING AT THE MINNESOTA DOWNS RESIDENCY THIS WEEK<\/U><\/STRONG><\/P> Well we had the 2007 season close out last week and here were are annual contest winners.<\/P> In the Minnesota Homebred Championship Contest CHUCKROCK defended his title scoring 44 points with his nominated homebreds which was only 1 point ahead of DOZA who ended up in 2nd place. THEO closed up strongly at the end to end up in third place with 38 points.<\/P> In the Minnesota Stallion Breeding Contest for horses sired by a Minnesota standing sires DARNATH won with his colt GHAZRATS(MN) out of GHAZI by posting a 15-5-3-0 record and earnings of $188,350. CHUCKROCK finished 2nd with MAXIMUM EXERTION(MN) who was 13-5-2-0 with $74,535 in earnings.<\/P> The Minnesota Cup Champion for 2007 was Doza who beat the defending Champion Cothill 4-0 in the final and took home 1000 credits and the famed trophy. The offseason will be short with the 2008 Minnesota Cup contest starting in February.<\/P> In The Minnesota BP’s Contest—Theoldguy was the winner earning 2465 bp’s with his Blackbart stable on the year with Wenlock taking 2nd place with his Hullwayne stable at 2090 bp’s and Prebola ending up 3rd with his Bums stable which raked in 2009 bp’s on the year.<\/P> In The Minnesota $$$ Contest—Rafa ended up the winner when his Palmisland stable earned $3,325,634 on the year helped out by Bluegrass Derby winner and Minnesota Classic winner Ataun, Ojai Valley’s Kingkirby stable finished 2nd with $1,758,718 and Brentuk came in 3rd with his Brentuk stable earning $1,603,558.<\/P> Wenlock won the latest Head to Head Challenge contest after Randy was ganged up on in the final week and had him slip down to 3rd place.<\/P> We had one of the closest finishes ever in the latest Mountains of Money contest where a player scores the win place and show payouts on their weekly nominated horses over 16 weeks with BIGRICK holding on to the win with $204.40 just ahead of the late charging RANDY who ended up with $203.60. What a finish that was in that contest.<\/P> And finally our 1st edition of the Minnesota BP stable contest came to an end last week with Doza the winner earning 687 bp’s in the 3 months and Wenlock finishing 2nd with 590 bp’s.<\/P> SHORT FIELD SHOWS UP FOR TURF ROUTE STAKE IN MINNY THIS WEEKEND<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":419,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-previews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/419"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5268\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
GOOD LUCK AND GOOD RACING<\/P>
THEO<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"