BALTIMORE – Grade 2-placed Kaufymaker makes her seasonal debut Friday at Pimlico in the $100,000 The Very One Stakes for fillies and mares racing five furlongs on turf.

Trained by Wesley Ward, Kaufymaker was third in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf Sprint at Del Mar in 2021, but has only started five times since, winning three of them. She faced males in her final race last year and finished ninth in the Grade 2 Woodford at Keeneland.

BALTIMORE – Kingsbarns, winner of last year’s Grade 2 Louisiana Derby and perfect from two starts as a 4-year-old, is the 7-5 morning-line favorite in Friday’s Grade 3, $250,000 Pimlico Special for 3-year-olds and up racing 1 3/16 miles.

BALTIMORE – In the fourth start of her 4-year-old season, Shotgun Hottie won the Lady’s Secret Stakes at Monmouth Park before coming back six weeks later to win the Grade 3 Molly Pitcher, also at Monmouth.

Friday, Shotgun Hottie makes the fourth start of her 5-year-old campaign in the $100,000 Allaire duPont Distaff at Pimlico, a race her connections are hoping to use to get back to the Molly Pitcher later this summer.

In the duPont, at 1 1/8 miles, Shotgun Hottie takes on seven rivals, two of whom are riding five-race winning streaks against lesser competition.

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – The first time Themanupfront and Live High Live Low faced each other, as maidens during the Gulfstream Park Championship meet, it was no contest. Themanupfront registered a wire-to-wire, three-quarter-length victory with Live High Live Low a non-threatening eighth after a somewhat eventful trip.

ARCADIA, Calif. – Handicapping uncertainties abound Friday on an unpretentious eight-race card at Santa Anita.

The ambiguities include a front-runner on an anti-speed course, a likely favorite in a maiden race who lost his first 21 starts, allowance sprint fillies experimenting at two turns, and a deep closer trying to get up at five furlongs in the shortest race of the day.

BALTIMORE, Md. – She Feels Pretty is making her first start in more than six months, but still looms large in Friday’s $100,000 Hilltop Stakes for 3-year-old fillies going a mile on the Pimlico turf.

BALTIMORE – Avoiding favorites in the Black-Eyed Susan Stakes has been sage advice, the public choice having not won this Grade 2, $300,000 race for 3-year-old fillies since Royal Delta beat four horses in 2011.

Identifying the favorite in Friday’s 100th running of the Black-Eyed Susan at Pimlico is no easy task with four of the eight runners pegged between 5-2 and 9-2 on the morning line and only one having been successful in graded competition.

ETOBICOKE, Ontario – Turf racing returns to Woodbine this week with the first race scheduled for the inner course on Friday when rain is in the forecast.

Tim Lawson, Woodbine’s vice president of racing, said turf season is beginning earlier than usual because of covers that were installed over the course last fall for the winter.

BALTIMORE – The Maryland-based fillies Cap Classique and Miss Harriett were nominated to several stakes on Friday’s Black-Eyed Susan card at Pimlico Race Course, with their connections pondering distance and surface preferences and watching the weather forecast. Ultimately, both wound up in the Grade 3, $150,000 Miss Preakness Stakes at six furlongs on dirt, where they will take on the formidable Kentucky shipper Youalmosthadme.