The highest-level North American race Saturday comes in California, the Grade 2 Los Alamitos Futurity. Looking for value in that short field, basically a Bob Baffert intramural, feels like trying to squeeze blood from a stone.

The richest open North American races come at Turfway Park, which never has short fields and has assembled four wildly competitive Saturday stakes. The 2-year-old turf races at Gulfstream also hold betting appeal, as do a pair of $500,000 New York stallion stakes at Aqueduct.

Tropical Park Oaks

A potentially interesting showdown between open-company stakes winners Nic’s Style and Beth’s Dream is on tap in Saturday’s $100,000 City of Ocala Stakes at Tampa Bay Downs.

The City of Ocala and the $100,000 Marion County for males are for progeny for Florida-based stallions and are both run at seven furlongs.

Howard Wolowitz, whose Breeders’ Cup hopes fizzled at Del Mar, looks for another big bang as he returns to Tapeta for the $250,000 Holiday Cheer Stakes on Saturday night. The race is one of two six-furlong sprints on the Turfway Park Synthetic Championships slate, with four stakes worth a combined $1 million on the card.

Free Like a Girl has gone a good, long while racing with less than two months between starts, and on Saturday at Fair Grounds, she’ll be asked to sprint for the first time in good, long while.

Free Like a Girl, set as the odds-on morning-line favorite, is one of nine older Louisiana-bred fillies and mares entered in the $100,000 Louisiana Champions Day Ladies Sprint. Through an outstanding record of 45-21-11-6, 5-year-old Free Like a Girl has earned $2,099,978 in purse money, more than any other Louisiana-bred. She can be retired tomorrow and go out a smashing success.

With a second-place finish by 1 1/2 lengths to stablemate Citizen Bull in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile at Del Mar on Nov. 1, Gaming narrowly missed winning the division’s most prestigious race and a chance at the 2-year-old championship.

His status among the 3-year-old prospects for 2025 may be brighter after Saturday’s Grade 2 Los Alamitos Futurity.

Gaming is part of a field of five in the $200,000 Los Alamitos Futurity, and one of three runners trained by Bob Baffert, who also starts Getaway Car, who was fourth in the BC Juvenile, and the maiden Mellencamp.

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – With the $140,000 Tropical Park Derby and its filly counterpart, the $140,000 Tropical Park Oaks, providing 3-year-old turf specialists around these parts one last chance to earn some black type against their own kind before the end of the season, it’s no wonder the entry box was filled to overflowing for both Saturday races at Gulfstream Park.

Trainer Randy Morse is tied atop the Oaklawn Park standings after opening weekend and will attempt to keep the barn’s momentum rolling Saturday with Grade 2 winner Taxed in the $150,000 Mistletoe.

She should go favored in the one-mile race that launches the meet’s filly and mare route series that culminates with the Apple Blossom Handicap.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Bold Fortune was no match for Sacrosanct when the pair of New York-bred juveniles debuted against each other at Saratoga in August. Bold Fortune looks better prepared for the rematch in Saturday’s $500,000 Great White Way division of the New York Stallion Series at Aqueduct.

The Great White Way and the $500,000 Fifth Avenue for 2-year-old fillies offer progeny of New York-based stallions their chance at potentially the biggest payday of their careers. Both races are run at seven furlongs.

For Jake Delhomme, a repeat of Louisiana Champions Day 2023 would work just fine.

A year ago, Touchuponastar beat just three rivals as an odds-on favorite winning his second Champions Day Classic before Mangum rallied from 13th to land the Champions Day Sprint, giving Delhomme’s Set-Hut a Louisiana stakes double.

In the two years since Empressum won the Champion of Champions at Los Alamitos, the now 6-year-old gelding has had 12 starts, winning seven times and finishing second in the other five races.

The ultra-consistent record is not enough to give Empressum the role of favorite in Saturday’s $600,000 Champion of Champions at 440 yards. He may be the third choice behind the Midwest import Jess Good Wine, the likely favorite, and the red-hot 4-year-old Jeriko.