HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – Midnight Taxes and King Peanut rank among the most impressive Arkansas-bred maiden winners of the Oaklawn Park meet and on Saturday the pair will meet for the first time in the $150,000 Rainbow.

The six-furlong race is for 3-year-olds bred in Arkansas. It shares a card with its counterpart for fillies, the $150,000 Rainbow Miss.

Midnight Taxes was a four-length winner of a maiden special weight over older rivals Feb. 25, while King Peanut won his debut by seven lengths in a maiden for 2-year-olds in December.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Trainer George Weaver believes Pass the Champagne has a solid, albeit short, run. It just has to be timed correctly.

Weaver hopes jockey Jose Lezcano can time it right Friday when Pass the Champagne runs in the Grade 3, $150,000 Distaff Handicap, a seven-furlong race for fillies and mares at Aqueduct.

The Distaff is the featured event on an eight-race card that also is marked by the return of grass racing to this circuit, with three such events.

With six Group 1 wins since August, Anamoe is certain to be named Australian Horse of the Year for the current 2022-23 season.

Anamoe has a chance to equal Winx’s record of seven Group 1 wins in a year in the $3.36 million Queen Elizabeth Stakes at 1 1/4 miles at Royal Randwick Racecourse in Sydney on Friday evening. Winx reached the milestone in the 2018-19 season.

LEXINGTON, Ky. – Three-year-olds of the colt-and-gelding kind will precede their female counterparts on center stage Friday at Keeneland when the Lafayette and Transylvania serve as terrific lead-ins to the Grade 1 Ashland.

The $400,000 Lafayette (race 7) marks the eagerly awaited return of Gulfport, who will break from post 1 in a seven-horse field going seven furlongs. The Grade 3, $400,000 Transylvania (race 8) might be the deepest race of the opening-day card, with the turf-course maximum of 12 runners going 1 1/16 miles.

Trainer Tim Yakteen is back on the Kentucky Derby trail, and this year it’s not all about Bob.

A year ago at this time, with trainer Bob Baffert on suspension owing to the medication positive incurred by Medina Spirit in the 2021 Kentucky Derby, Yakteen deputized over the development of 3-year-olds Taiba and Messier. Those two horses ran one-two in the Grade 1 Santa Anita Derby, qualifying both for the Kentucky Derby, where Taiba finished 12th and Messier 15th as the second and fourth choices, respectively.

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – With the local horse population taking a big hit this past week following the conclusion of the Championship meeting, a fair majority of those equine snowbirds among the cream of the crop stabled here this winter, it comes as no surprise that Friday’s card at Gulfstream Park is bereft of an allowance race.

The main events on the nine-race program are a $33,000 high-priced conditioned claiming dash on the turf and a $31,000 starter/optional claimer to be decided at one mile, also on grass.

ARCADIA, Calif. – Three diverse sprint races Friday at Santa Anita share a common denominator – conspicuous favorites.

Doris Mae should wire race 4, a dirt allowance for Cal-bred fillies and mares; Spain Moonlight, a well-regarded import from France, makes her U.S. debut in race 5 for maiden turf fillies and mares; Howbeit, a graded stakes winner, runs for a $100,000 tag in race 8, an allowance sprint on dirt.

Trainer Kenny McPeek comes into Saturday’s Blue Grass Stakes under the radar despite being expected to enter three in the Grade 1, $1 million race. Hayes Strike, last-out winner of the Private Terms Stakes at Laurel, headlines the trio, while McPeek also planned to saddle graded stakes-placed Sun Thunder and the unbeaten but lightly raced Mendelssohns March.

Mage

Good Magic – Puca, by Big Brown

Bred in Kentucky by Grandview Equine ($235,000 Keeneland September yearling purchase by New Team; $290,000 Fasig-Tipton Midlantic juvenile purchase by OGMA Investments)

HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – Trainer Norm Casse is having a meet to remember at Oaklawn Park and will attempt to keep things humming along Friday with Tough Legacy.

She goes in the eighth race, which is one of three allowances on a 10-race card. It’s a first-level offering for 3-year-old fillies at 1 1/16 miles. The card opens an abbreviated raceweek as there is no racing Sunday in observance of Easter.

Tough Legacy could go favored as Casse seeks to improve upon his Oaklawn mark of 13 wins from 34 starts, a win rate of 38 percent. His trainees have earned $781,709 at the meet.