HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – Stakes winner Just Steel will remove blinkers for the Southwest, trainer D. Wayne Lukas said Tuesday. The horse is coming off a runner-up finish in the Smarty Jones, a race in which he tracked the pace, took the lead, and was overtaken in the later stages by the stretch-running Catching Freedom.

Just Steel came into the Smarty Jones off a win in the Ed Brown Stakes at Churchill Downs.

“I’m going to take the blinkers off,” Lukas said. “I just think he doesn’t need them. They weren’t very big – he had a small cup on them. We’ll make the change.”

HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – Trainer Cipriano Contreras and his nephew, jockey Emmanuel Esquivel, are off to a fast start at Oaklawn.

“We got lucky a couple of horses ran okay early in the meet,” Contreras said. “Sometimes you get a good start. Sometimes you end up doing okay. Sometimes nothing goes your way. When you win a race, you better have a good dinner. It might be a good while before you get a good dinner again.”

From all accounts, both men are eating well.

HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – The unbeaten and untested Carbone likely will make his next start in the Grade 3, $800,000 Southwest Stakes at Oaklawn Park, trainer Steve Asmussen said Tuesday.

The 1 1/16-mile race will reward its first five finishers Kentucky Derby points on a scale of 20-10-6-4-2. The Southwest anchors a card of four stakes Jan. 27.

Carbone has won his two career starts by a combined 12 lengths. He earned a Beyer Speed Figure of 85 in November, when he won a maiden special weight by eight lengths over Goldbrick, who is a half-brother to millionaire Mr. Wireless.

The Thursday weather forecast at Aqueduct suggests a standard mid-winter gloomy afternoon, cloudy, high temperature around 30, no precipitation. That might be all the 5-year-old horse Callaloo needs to contend in the featured seventh race.

Book’em Danno began his 3-year-old campaign looking like a bigger, stronger version of the very good 2-year-old he was last year. And while Book’em Danno was no faster on Beyer Speed Figures winning the Pasco Stakes on Saturday at Tampa Bay Downs than he was last summer and fall, he won the seven-furlong Pasco by more than 12 lengths while racing wide and barely being asked.

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – It’s never too early to catch a little Derby fever, especially around South Florida this time of year, and especially after watching a performance such as the one Conquest Warrior put on winning his maiden here Saturday for Hall of Fame trainer Shug McGaughey.

Goddess of Fire burned some money flaming out Nov. 26 at Aqueduct in her return from a 14-month layoff, but with a bounce back to anything approaching her better form, the mare will lord over the featured sixth race Thursday at Gulfstream Park.

The concern: That better form has grown very stale. Goddess of Fire’s last performance that reflected her innate ability came in August 2022, when she was third in the Grade 1 Alabama. Five weeks later, she ran poorly in the Grade 1 Cotillion Stakes and did not start again until the Aqueduct outing.

Southern California tracks will be forced to reduce prize money through 2024, continuing a trend that began last spring, amid a decline in handle that has created ongoing purse overpayments at Del Mar and Santa Anita, according to a letter track officials sent to the California Horse Racing Board earlier this month.

ARCADIA, Calif. – Tamara, the winner of the Grade 1 Del Mar Debutante in September, continues to recover from a splint bone injury detected after she finished seventh as the beaten favorite in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies at Santa Anita in November.

Trainer Richard Mandella said that Tamara will be transferred next week from a local farm to a lay-up facility operated by Julie Adair to begin light activity. Mandella said he does not expect Tamara to rejoin his Santa Anita stable until later in February.

“Whenever she’s back, she’s back,” Mandella said.

ARCADIA, Calif. – Easter, the impressive winner of three turf stakes in Southern California in his final three starts of 2023, will have a delayed 2024 debut in the Grade 1 Frank Kilroe Mile at Santa Anita on March 2.

Trainer Phil D’Amato said over the weekend that he would prefer to start Easter’s season in the $300,000 Kilroe on turf instead of the Grade 3 Thunder Road Stakes at a mile on turf on Feb. 3. The long-range goal is the Breeders’ Cup Mile at Del Mar on Nov. 2.