Oak Tree Breeders’ Cup Meet Begins

The 2009 Oak Tree @ Santa Anita meet kicks off on Sept 30th, and the highlight will be the 2-day Breeders’ Cup festivities on November 6th and 7th.

Fairplex Park wrapped up their meet on Monday, and my Pick 9 ticket ended up with four winners. Nobody correctly tabbed nine winners during the 15-day fair stand, and tickets with seven on the final day were rewarded with $51k.

Winners' circle at Santa Anita Park

Back to Oak Tree, and the opening day feature race is the Grade 3 Morvich Handicap, which is the local prep for the Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint.

Desert Code finished 7th in this race last year before winning the BC Turf Sprint at 36-1. He has not been seen since April, and he is looking to get back on the beam following a pair of disappointing efforts earlier this year. He reunites with winning BC pilot Richard Migliore.

California Flag looks like the one to catch and beat. He won the ‘08 Morvich and exits a determined win in the Green Flash at Del Mar. This is my Horse Racing Nation free selection of the day.

If you are interested in the Pick 6, I will be covering the daily action on my pick six blog, and you can view the opening day ticket here.

In addition, we will be all over the Breeder’s Cup on Horse Racing Nation, and I will be posting many blogs about the big event in the coming days and weeks.

For those interested in my Louisiana Downs analysis, note that our ‘09 meet ends on Sunday, Oct. 4th. I have completed my Thursday (Oct 1st) analysis, and you can view it here. Just click on the Thursday Selections and the pdf file will open.

Image: Newscom