SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – If the last week of the meet could go as well as the first week did, trainer Cherie DeVaux could see her Saratoga summer go from good to great.

DeVaux won with four of her first 10 starters during opening week, but has gone winless with 18 runners since. However, DeVaux had six seconds and four thirds from those 18 starters, including runner-up finishes in the Grade 2 Shuvee (Shotgun Hottie), Grade 1 Fourstardave (More Than Looks ), and Grade 2 Lake Placid (She Looks Pretty). Vahva finished third in last Saturday’s Grade 1 Ballerina.

Maidens are the focus Friday at Del Mar, where four of the eight races are for non-winners. Four other races are starter allowances and claiming.

Del Mar leans heavily on turf and maiden races. Through Sunday, 48 percent of races were on turf and 38 percent were for maidens. Turf and maiden races combine Friday, with California-bred 2-year-olds going one mile on turf in races 3 and 5.

Layoff returnee Team Concept holds a strong hand in Friday’s $10,000 starter-allowance feature over 6 1/2 furlongs at Emerald Downs.

Although unraced since April 2023, Team Concept rates a big shot upon her return for trainer Justin Evans. She “has been working lights out,” Evans said. “We’re looking forward to her.”

The mare has sprinted exactly once in her life, and that was in her career debut when a decent fourth of 10. DRF’s Formulator reveals that Evans has won with his past four sprinters returning from layoffs of 400 days or more.

Belterra Park has carded co-features on the turf Friday that nearly bookend the card, with the $75,000 Tomboy Stakes, for Ohio-bred 3-year-old fillies on the turf, the opener, and the $75,000 Buckeye Native, for Ohio-accredited 3-year-olds and up on the grass, the seventh of eight races.

ETOBICOKE, Ontario – Toronto Cup Stakes winner Love to Shop returns from an extended layoff in Friday’s Woodbine headliner, a conditioned allowance with a $50,000 claiming option scheduled for seven furlongs on the main turf.

After ending up third in the Grade 3 Ontario Colleen in her first start for trainer Kevin Attard last summer, Love to Shop beat the boys in the Sept. 3 Toronto Cup going a mile on the grass under Emma-Jayne Wilson.

The photo on the wall in the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame is small – perhaps a handbreadth – and in black and white, making it easy to overlook amidst the other artwork in the exhibit. But she is still so vivid it’s as if she’s in living color. Her stride is fully extended as if to bound off the page as she reaches for the finish line in front, always in front, ears up as if thoroughly enjoying her own power. Her jockey’s pristine silks are snapped taut in a wind of her own making.

It’s raining money in little Franklin, Ky., population 10,000, situated not especially close to anything.

Thanks to a casino, the Mint Gaming Hall, humming away on the property, the astronomical purses Kentucky Downs offered the last several years somehow have grown even higher for 2024. The track intends to pay out roughly $37 million during a seven-day meeting that begins Thursday.

Brendan Walsh targets the Kentucky Downs meeting. He hit the mark during the 2023 season with eight winners, three more than any other trainer, and Walsh wastes no time getting back into heavy action this year. He has entrants in six Thursday’s races, including live contender Irish Aces in the featured $500,000 Tapit Stakes.

DEL MAR, Calif. – Umberto Rispoli and Edwin Maldonado, two of the top six riders at the Del Mar summer meeting, will miss Saturday’s blockbuster program at Del Mar to ride at Kentucky Downs.

The Del Mar program on Saturday is the richest of the meeting, with five stakes, including the Grade 1 Pacific Classic, a $1 million race at 1 1/4 miles that is a key prep for the $7 million Breeders’ Cup Classic at Del Mar on Nov. 2.