Titles, records up for grabs

NEW YORK - As the 2002 year in racing winds down to its final days, several national titles and records are still up for grabs.

Through Wednesday, Hall of Fame trainer Bobby Frankel was $282,930 shy of D. Wayne Lukas's 1988 single-season earnings record of $17,842,358. With time running out, Frankel's biggest weapon this weekend is You in the $200,000 La Brea Stakes at Santa Anita on Saturday.

Frankel, who won the money title in 2001 with $14.6 million, leads second-place Bob Baffert by more than $5.6 million.

Hall of Fame rider Jerry Bailey, who will win his sixth overall money title at the end of the year, is chasing Mike Smith's record of 68 stakes wins in a single season, set in 1994. Bailey, who has 64 stakes winners, has several live stakes mounts on Saturday at Calder on the Grand Slam II card. He is named on Man From Wicklow in the $200,000 William L. McKnight; Mot Juste in the $200,000 La Prevoyante; Two Item Limit in the $100,000 Stage Door Betty; and Best of the Rest in the $100,000 Fred. W. Hooper.

Bailey's mounts this year, including his win aboard Street Cry in the Dubai World Cup, have earned $22,662,701.

The race between trainers Scott Lake and Steve Asmussen for the most wins in the North America will come down to the wire. Lake, who won the title in 2000 and 2001, had 395 winners through Wednesday, one more than Asmussen.

Should Lake and Asmussen, who is in search of his first national title, each saddle 400 winners, it would be the first time that two trainers will have accomplished that feat in a single season.

Jockey Russell Baze, with 429 winners, is on target to win his seventh national riding title. The northern California-based rider has won at least 400 races in 10 of the last 11 years. Cornelio Velasquez is in second, trailing Baze by more than 100 winners.