HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Trainer Jose D’Angelo is hoping talent will trump experience when he takes his two recent graded stakes-winning but relatively lightly raced 3-year-olds – Bentornato and Howard Wolowitz – to Del Mar for the 2024 Breeders’ Cup.

Bentornato will enter the Sprint on Nov. 2 with just eight starts on his résumé, five of them victories, including a game neck decision over Sunny Breeze last month at Parx Racing in the Grade 2 Gallant Bob.

How competitive is the Maryland Million Classic? Feeling Woozy is the lukewarm 9-2 favorite on the morning line.

The Classic is for 3-year-olds and up at 1 1/8 miles and is the Saturday feature at Laurel Park as Maryland-bred and -sired horses take center stage for the annual Jim McKay Maryland Million.

Feeling Woozy hasn’t won this year, but his most recent victory, a second-level allowance on Dec. 1 at Laurel, was his one and only start at nine furlongs. To say he liked it would be an understatement as he led every step en route to an 11 1/4-length victory.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – While trainer Danny Gargan contemplates whether or not to run Grade 1 Frizette runner-up Snowyte in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies, he does seem set on where he will next run his impressive debut-winning New York-bred 2-year-old Man in Finance.

Man in Finance, who won his debut Sept. 21 by 7 3/4 lengths, earning an 82 Beyer Speed Figure, will make his next start in the $200,000 Sleepy Hollow Stakes for New York-breds on Oct. 27.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Jose Lezcano and his long-time agent Jason Beides have parted ways. Lezcano has retained the services of P.J. Campo to represent him.

Campo is the agent for Javier Castellano and Eric Cancel. In New York, agents may only represent two journeyman jockeys at one time. Campo will retain Castellano, who has been sidelined since Aug. 31 due to injury but could return to race-riding on Oct. 18. Cancel is looking for a new agent.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Trainer Mike Trombetta is running his best female turf sprinter, Future Is Now, in Sunday’s Grade 2 Franklin Stakes at Keeneland. But Hollywood Walk, the filly he runs in Saturday’s $135,000 Floral Park Stakes for females on turf at Aqueduct, isn’t too bad either.

“Future Is Now has been running against the best horses and doing well with them,” Trombetta said. “They’re not tremendously far off.”

The Lion In Winter, who last saw racing action this summer, can stake a claim as the best 2-year-old in Europe this fall if he runs to heavy favoritism Saturday at Newmarket in the Group 1 Dewhurst Stakes.

The Dewhurst, run down a straight course over seven furlongs, drew six entrants, and Seagulls Eleven, trained by Hugo Palmer, is the only one of them who doesn’t spend his days and nights in the training yard of Charlie Appleby in England or Aidan O’Brien in Ireland.

ARCADIA, Calif. – The last race is one of best Saturday at Santa Anita, and rocket-ship filly Sassy Nature faces a simple question – can she carry her speed 6 1/2 furlongs on the downhill turf course?

A deep field of statebred fillies and mares – six are stakes winners – entered the $100,000 California Distaff Handicap, which goes as race 9. It’s a longer race than usual for Sassy Nature, a pedal-to-the-metal stakes winner who routinely blazes away at distances up to 5 1/2 furlongs.

Only twice in the last six years has trainer Chad Brown failed to win the Queen Elizabeth II Challenge Cup Stakes. Saturday at Keeneland, Brown has two chances, Grayosh and Oversubscribed, to break a one-year QE II losing streak.

A good field of 10 3-year-old fillies was entered in a Grade 1 offering a gross purse of $750,000, $100,000 available only to Kentucky-breds. Brown, a five-time QE II winner, sent Liguria out to finish sixth in the 2023 renewal and neither of his entrants will be favored Saturday.

“I always say I should have named her Two Steps Forward Three Back,” owner-breeder Erin Hlubik said about her pride and joy, the 7-year-old mare Bourbon Bon Bay.

When Bourbon Bon Bay is race-ready, she rarely takes a wrong step as she’s won five times from six starts, including a victory in Parx Racing’s Cornucopia Stakes in 2022.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Her better races may be going longer, but in the modest field of 3-year-old fillies assembled for Saturday’s Grade 2, $200,000 Sands Point Stakes at Aqueduct, Justdeny might not come up short.

Coming out of a second-place finish behind Beautiful Love in the Grade 3 Jockey Club Oaks going 1 3/8 miles here last month, Justdeny shortens up to 1 1/8 miles in the Sands Point. The field of eight entered to run on the inner turf course has combined to win just two stakes.