ETOBICOKE, Ontario – The penultimate Sunday of the marathon Woodbine meet doesn’t have a stakes. The nine-race card includes a 1 1/16-mile conditioned allowance for fillies and mares that seems wide open.

Good as Gone could shake loose up front by the time they hit the first turn. She did just that in her next-to-last race against nonwinners of two and proceeded to set soft fractions on a golden rail before holding on to prevail by a neck with a 75 Beyer Speed Figure. Runner-up Regal Moment came right back to win at the same class.

Since 2022, Butch Reid has shipped seven horses to Aqueduct for stakes victories, but that recent string of success has not come with a breakthrough in juvenile company. The Parx-based trainer hopes to end the streak with Parker Boone on Saturday in the $500,000 Great White Way division of the New York Stallion Series.

“It’s a race we’ve been looking for since he came into the barn in about June,” Reid said. “I almost won one of these races a few years back, and it’s a big, fat pot, so you can make the horse’s whole year with one of them.”

Solitude Dude, a runaway debut winner at Gulfstream Park, looms a short-priced favorite in a field of seven 2-year-olds entered to run six furlongs in Saturday’s $125,000 Inaugural Stakes at Tampa Bay Downs.

A son of Yaupon who brought $300,000 at an Ocala Breeders’ Sales Co. 2-year-olds in training sale, Solitude Dude sped off to a 9 1/2-length victory on Nov. 1 at Gulfstream.

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Padiddle has won just once in 15 lifetime starts, although two of his 14 losses were third-place finishes behind the multiple Grade 1 winner Far Bridge earlier this season in the Grade 3 Pan American and Grade 2 Man o’ War stakes. Those three-turn performances could be enough to make the long-winded Padiddle a major player when stretching out to two miles Saturday at Gulfstream Park in the $100,000 H. Allen Jerkens Handicap.

The Allen Jerkens drew just eight starters, with Risk Manager and Just Cause the 121-pound co-highweights and likely favorites.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Though he had to make a bit of a lineup adjustment, trainer Todd Pletcher will have two chances to win a record-extending 10th edition of the Grade 2, $250,000 Demoiselle Stakes on Saturday at Aqueduct.

While Pletcher had to stop on debut winner With a Kiss, he will send out another debut winner, Zany, along with Tempted Stakes runner-up Believable in a field of six 2-year-old fillies attempting to run 1 1/8 miles over the main track.

Some unfortunately short fields in New York and California and two inscrutable juvenile stakes at Tampa limit plausible plays this first Saturday of December. In the end, it’s an all long-distance edition of Weekend GamePlan – no race shorter than nine furlongs need apply.

Remsen

There’s been one constant with El Grande O as summer has turned to late fall in New York – he’s breaking from the rail post.

It was the case at Saratoga, and it was the case at the Belmont at Big A meet. And it again will be the case Saturday as El Grande O has drawn the fence for the Grade 3, $250,000 Elite Power at Aqueduct.

“Every time we run him,” quipped trainer Linda Rice. “It’s okay. I would prefer not to be on it, but it is what it is.”

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Trainer Rick Dutrow believes he has a very nice horse in his barn in the 2-year-old Igniter. He’s just not certain how far the son of Volatile wants to run.

Dutrow should get a better idea on Saturday at Aqueduct when Igniter stretches out to 1 1/8 miles around two turns in the Grade 2, $250,000 Remsen Stakes, a race that could fuel or extinguish dreams of the Kentucky Derby six months hence.

The dynasty was established years ago.

Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert has won the Starlet Stakes for 2-year-olds fillies at Los Alamitos annually for a record eight years, and three times at Hollywood Park before its closure in 2013. The late Hall of Famer D. Wayne Lukas won the race eight times.

On Saturday, Baffert has three chances to extend his dominance when Consequent, Himika, and Nimah start in the Grade 2, $200,000 Starlet Stakes at 1 1/16 miles.

Swift Delivery first made headlines when NFL star Travis Kelce bought into the gelding in August 2024, a few months after attending his first Kentucky Derby. Swift Delivery then went out and made his own reputation, becoming a graded stakes winner earlier this year.