Touchuponastar, who won the Grade 2 New Orleans Classic in March at Fair Grounds, is on a bit of a busman’s holiday for the summer and is scheduled to return to racing this fall, owner Jake Delhomme said Tuesday.

“We’ve done it the last two years,” he said.

Touchuponastar is based at a training center in Louisiana. He ranks fourth in all-time earnings among Louisiana-breds with $1,460,000. Delhomme said the Louisiana-bred stakes for older route horses over the summer are on turf and that fact, coupled with the heat, made for the decision to freshen Touchuponastar.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – The popular Baby Yoda, who went off form late last summer after an eye-catching victory in the Grade 2 True North at Saratoga a year ago, returns to the races Friday in a high-class allowance race that serves as the feature at Aqueduct.

In the multi-conditioned race at 6 1/2 furlongs, Baby Yoda is eligible under the clause for horses who haven’t won $45,000 since Dec. 13, 2024.

The race is slated as the fifth leg of a pick six that has a carryover of $30,569. 

J.G. Torrealba and Yedsit Hazlewood, leading jockeys at Laurel Park, were in a car accident early Tuesday morning. Torrealba was unharmed in the incident, but Hazlewood sustained multiple injuries and is expected to miss significant time.

According to trainer Jose Corrales, who helped Hazlewood travel to the United States and find mounts earlier this year, the two jockeys were traveling back from New York and were attempting to maneuver around a car ahead of them. The trainer said that they hit a rail beside the road, which flipped the car.

It took two magical minutes in 2022 for Sonny Leon to become a household name, forever and always a Kentucky Derby winner. Nestled among names like Smith, Velazquez, and Castellano, his winning ride aboard 80-1 longshot Rich Strike will forever mark him in one of racing’s most precious record books.

No one stumbles into a Derby mount. Far from the public eye the vast majority of his 11-year career, it has always been a march for the 35-year-old rider, a grinding search for recognition and respect in a sometimes unforgiving business.

ARCADIA, Calif. – The hottest trainer in California presses the accelerator Friday at Santa Anita.

John Sadler has nine wins and eight seconds from his last 23 starters, and closing week at Santa Anita is no time to let up. Sadler entered five runners Friday including well-bred Eagles Flight, who is seeking a return to form in an allowance sprint that is the featured eighth race.

Eagles Flight is a question mark shortening up after a distant third as the odds-on favorite in a route.

Multiple graded stakes-placed Nash, who is looking to work his way back to that level for the powerhouse Godolphin operation and trainer Brad Cox, has improved his Beyer Speed Figure in each of three starts this year off a long layoff. Last time out, he had the bad luck of hooking World Record, one of several graded stakes winners in a strong allowance field last month at Churchill Downs. He pressed that rival and had his bid turned back by 2 1/2 lengths, with World Record missing the track mark by 0.29 of a second.

ETOBICOKE, Ontario – The meet-leading combo of apprentice jockey Pietro Moran and trainer Kevin Attard will have Arami’s Speightster in Friday’s sixth race at Woodbine.

Lasting Silence is another dropper from Ontario-sired/$40,000 company in the 6 1/2-furlong main turf sprint. Both 3-year-olds are trying grass for the first time in the $25,000 maiden claimer.

Churchill Downs Inc. has informed the Louisiana Racing Commission that it intends to give up its racing and gambling licenses for Fair Grounds Race Course in New Orleans and its offtrack betting parlors because of dissatisfaction over a recent state Supreme Court ruling and its own unsuccessful efforts to gain relief from the legislature.