by Brisnet.com
Eclipse Award winning trainer Steve Asmussen returned to Santa Anita on
Tuesday for the second consecutive year and will maintain a stable of
approximately 40 horses through Santa Anita’s upcoming winter/spring meeting,
which will open on December 26.
Assistant trainer Scott Blasi will once again oversee Asmussen’s operation at
Barn 27, which will include managing recent Grade 2 Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint
winner Regally Ready.
The Asmussen stable started 52 horses at the 2010-11 meeting, winning 13
races, including four stakes.
“We were very happy with how things went here last year,” Blasi said. “Steve
said last year that we wanted to do a better job on the top-end of racing and
coming here helped us meet that goal. We race all over the country and there’s
no better place to be than Santa Anita. The weather is fantastic and the purses
are great. We’re just now settling in and hopefully, we’ll be ready to roll by
opening day.
“Right now, we’re just monitoring all the horses and making sure they’ve
handled the ship well. We’ll make sure everyone is eating up and we’ll just go
from there. We’ll probably have a few horses ready to breeze by next week.”
Blasi also noted that highly regarded three-year-olds Rothko, a colt by Arch
who has won his past three races, and Wine Police, a son of champion sprinter
Speightstown who was a minor stakes winner this past September at Saratoga, are
both being considered for the Grade 1 Malibu Stakes at seven furlongs on opening
day.
Asmussen, America’s leading trainer by number of winners on five different
occasions, was honored as America’s Eclipse Award-winning trainer in 2008 and in
2009. He became only the fifth trainer in U.S. history to win 6,000 races when
reaching that milestone on November 18.