Wet weather has caused more cancellations than racing days in the opening weeks of the current Santa Anita winter-spring meeting.

That is about to change.

The forecast in Southern California in the next week is for fine weather, just in time for a four-day week of racing beginning Thursday. A five-day racing week is scheduled from Jan. 15-19. The Thursdays of those weeks are replacement days for recent cancellations.

“We’re looking forward to getting back into some racing,” track general manager Nate Newby said Monday.

With 11 wins from 42 starters, Carlos David finds himself tied for fourth in the trainer standings through the first five weeks of the Gulfstream Park Championship meet. He hopes to transfer some of that success across the state this week to Tampa Bay Downs.

David, who is 0 for 5 with two seconds thus far at Tampa, will seek his first victory Wednesday with Win N Your In, one of six female sprinters entered in a third-level allowance/optional $100,000 claiming race that serves as the feature on a nine-race card.

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – A pair of allowance races with claiming options highlight Thursday’s Gulfstream card, topped by a five-furlong dash on the turf.

Race 10 drew a field of 11 3-year-old fillies, led by trainer Wesley Ward’s Pulstar, the only multiple winner in the field, and the well-graded maiden winner Epic Lady Luck from the barn of the red-hot Brian Lynch.

Grande and River Thames, two stakes-placed 3-year-olds in 2025 trained by Todd Pletcher, are working their way back toward the races.

Grande, the Grade 2 Wood Memorial runner-up who was scratched from the Kentucky Derby with a foot bruise, has worked five times since Dec. 8, including a half-mile in 50.77 seconds Monday at the Palm Beach Downs training center. Pletcher said Grande had a series of setbacks following the foot bruise that led to him getting the remainder of the year off.

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Trainers Brad Cox and Todd Pletcher had Commandment and Nearly, a couple of newly turned 3-year-olds, put themselves into the Kentucky Derby picture with big performances here last week. In the process, they’ve become potential candidates for the Grade 3 Holy Bull later this month.

Commandment registered an eye-catching, 6 3/4-length victory punctuated by a huge gallop-out in the one-mile Mucho Macho Man on Saturday, while Nearly notched an equally impressive five-length entry-level allowance win the previous afternoon.

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – The first invitation list for the $3 million Pegasus World Cup was released late last week. The group consists of six local runners and six others currently scattered about the country. The South Florida-based contingent is likely to be well represented in the starting gate if things go according to plan between now and Pegasus World Cup day on Jan. 24.

ARCADIA, Calif. – An upside to the rain cancellations this winter at Santa Anita materializes Thursday with a normally mundane weekday card that looks instead like a strong weekend card.

Santa Anita canceled or postponed six programs during the first two weeks of the season, including four last week, which produced a backlog of stakes and turf races. The result is a Thursday make-up card highlighted by the Grade 3 Robert J. Frankel and $100,000 Eddie Logan, both on turf.

Long before he stormed through the uphill stretch to record a narrow win in the Grade 1 American Grand National Hurdle Stakes on Oct. 18 at Far Hills Racecourse in New Jersey, the Irish-bred gelding Zanahiyr was better known for losses in major races in Britain and Ireland.

A gentleman named Jay Bernardini ranked 26th among North American trainers with 108 wins during 2025. Sitting 27th, with 106 winners, came Bill Mott. Maybe you’ve heard of him.

Mott won 13 graded races during the year. The top three in the land took down 35, 28, and 26.

The statistical case simply doesn’t exist for Mott to be an Eclipse Award finalist. It hasn’t for decades and never will again. But we all know, at least in our hearts, that the numbers only carry so much weight, that piling up wins has everything to do with opportunity and approach.

Cool Jet did not just beat his rivals in three graded stakes in Virgina and South Carolina in the spring and fall of 2025. He trounced them.

Those victories have made Cool Jet a finalist for the Eclipse Award as the nation’s champion steeplechase horse of 2025.

Owned by Riverdee Stable and trained by Jack Fisher, Cool Jet won 3 of 6 starts and earned $190,500 in 2025, by far the most successful season of a career that began in Ireland in 2020.