Down the Stretch for September 8, 2025

We’ve got the Wonder Where Stakes and the Singspiel Stakes from Woodbine and let’s just say jockey Rafael Hernandez had a good day. There were 5 Grand Circuit Stakes at Mohawk on the weekend – we have the stretch calls of all of them. At Truro Raceway in Nova Scotia, veteran driver Claire MacDonald won 4 of 8 races on a recent card, but that wasn’t the most unusual result for her that night. We have the uplifting but disturbing story of a pacer named Tyler, who raced over 200 times, but had to be rescued hours before being slaughtered out of a kill pen. Jockey Kirk Johnson has been fully vindicated. The AGCO says there was no bad behaviour in the unusual finish of a race at Fort Erie. Jockey Alexis Sanchez pulled off the natural hattrick at Ajax Downs last week, and when Pretty Runaway won the Maturity Stakes, we learned this speedball has a unique appreciation of heavy metal music. We were on the phone to race caller Frank Miramahdi, who wraps up the summer meet from Saratoga. When he learned that Peter Gross didn’t get to the spa this year, he got his friends to lay into him pretty good. And we have a race from Laurel Park in which a flock of geese flew right into the horses as they came into the stretch.