ARCADIA, Calif. – Just miles from the Rose Parade on New Year’s Day in Pasadena, the parade of odds-on chalk slows slightly Wednesday at Santa Anita. After an opening week in which 16 of 39 favorites were less than even-money (11 won), two of nine favorites are odds-on Wednesday.

Oveta’s Hobby in race 2 and Jubilant Joanie in race 6, both listed at 3-5, will be the most heavily favored on the card. As usual for a weekday, the most appealing races are positioned at the back end of the nine-race card.

As the calendar turns to a new year Wednesday, Thoroughbreds in the Northern Hemisphere also officially turn a year older. Turfway Park wastes no time getting to its slate of 3-year-old stakes, as the $125,000 Gowell Stakes, for sophomore fillies sprinting six furlongs, features on a special holiday card with a first post of 1 p.m.

For the first time in his career, jockey Flavien Prat ranked atop the national standings, with earnings of more than $37.27 million for 2024. He finished his season Sunday with a record 82 stakes wins, including 56 graded stakes, also a record.

Starting Wednesday, with the turn of the calendar, Prat’s task is to repeat all of those accomplishments, if possible.

“It’s scary, right?” he said after winning Sunday’s first race at Santa Anita. “Everything goes back to zero.

“I’ve got to do it again. It’s challenging.”

“He’s the poster boy for castration if there ever was one,” trainer Butch Reid joked regarding Maximus Meridius, a leading contender in Parx’s $75,000 Blitzen Stakes for 3-year-olds and upward traveling seven furlongs on New Year’s Eve.

Maximus Meridius was cross-entered in Saturday’s $150,000 Gravesend at Aqueduct. Frozen track conditions prevented training at Parx recently, and Reid was undecided as of Thursday morning where his horse would participate.

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – When last seen locally, during the spring of 2023, Literate was still struggling to win a maiden race. When she returns to Gulfstream Park on Sunday, the daughter of Oscar Performance will be one of the key contenders in the $100,000 Key West, an overnight handicap for fillies and mares to be decided at 1 1/8 miles over the Tapeta course.

Trainer Steve Asmussen will attack the $175,000 Year’s End on Sunday at Oaklawn Park with the field’s most accomplished runner in Glee and its best-bred entrant in Adeera.

The Year’s End, which is for 2-year-old fillies, will be run at a one-mile configuration that ends at the sixteenth pole. It’s the richest offering on a 10-race card made up exclusively of races for 2-year-olds.