ETOBICOKE, Ontario – Hot Dance and A Little Frisky both worked nicely from the gate last Sunday and are among a field of seven first-time starters in Friday’s sixth race at Woodbine, a 6 1/2-furlong maiden-special for 2-year-old fillies with a base purse of $72,000.

Anisette, winner of two graded stakes for 3-year-old fillies on turf at Del Mar this summer, is scheduled to race against older fillies and mares in a stakes for the first time in the Grade 2 Rodeo Drive Stakes on Oct. 7 at Santa Anita.

Trainer Leonard Powell said Sunday that he intends to start Anisette in the $300,000 Rodeo Drive Stakes at 1 1/4 miles on turf instead of the Grade 1 Queen Elizabeth II Challenge Cup for 3-year-old fillies on Oct. 14 at Keeneland.

Veteran California trainer Hector Palma has been provisionally suspended by the Horseracing Integrity and Welfare Unit after one of his starters at Del Mar in late July tested positive for methamphetamine, according to the organization’s website.

The suspension was announced late last week and resulted in the scratch of Geezer from Sunday’s sixth race.

The positive was found in a post-race test taken from Baladi, the fourth-place finisher in a $32,000 claimer on July 30. Baladi, a 4-year-old gelding, has been suspended from racing by HIWU.

In the last decade, the Grade 2 Del Mar Handicap has been an annual gathering of many of trainer Phil D’Amato’s leading turf marathoners – and a successful one.

D’Amato has won the race seven times since 2014, including five of the last six runnings. In Saturday’s $300,000 running, D’Amato again has a deep team with three expected runners in Cash Equity, Cathkin Peak, and Gold Phoenix, who won the race in 2022.

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – How talented and well matched is the field for the $150,000 P.G. Johnson Stakes on Wednesday at Saratoga? Eight of the 11 juvenile fillies entered for the race, including the one main-track-only runner, won their career debuts. One of them, Cynane, was good enough to earn a ticket to Royal Ascot for the Group 2 Queen Mary off her first start.

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – The Ireland-based Bolshoi Ballet has recorded his last two victories in the U.S, albeit two years apart. He is expected to make another cross-Atlantic trip next month for the Grade 1 Joe Hirsch Turf Classic, trainer Aidan O’Brien said Monday.

Bolshoi Ballet was a dominant 4 1/2-length winner of Saturday’s Grade 1, $750,000 Sword Dancer Stakes, which earned him an automatic berth into the Breeders’ Cup Turf at Santa Anita on Nov. 4.

O’Brien said the Breeders’ Cup is the goal and the Joe Hirsch will be the way to get him there.

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Coming off three stakes victories on Sunday’s New York Showcase Day program, trainer Christophe Clement will seek to continue his stakes streak when he sends out the uncoupled pair of Carson’s Run and Spirit Prince in Thursday’s Grade 3, $175,000 With Anticipation Stakes for 2-year-olds at Saratoga.

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Clapton has joined a new band, er barn.

Clapton, winner of the Grade 3 Ghostzapper Stakes at Gulfstream Park in April and runner-up in the Grade 2 Suburban at Belmont Park last month, was purchased privately by Sheikh Rashid Bin Humaid Alnuami’s RRR Racing from Arindel Farm. He has been turned over to trainer Chad Summers, who will start him in Saturday’s Grade 1, $1 million Jockey Club Gold Cup at Saratoga.

Turf or dirt, open company or Illinois-breds, nothing has stood between Katie M’lady and the Hawthorne winner’s circle during 2023, and even a demanding weight assignment probably won’t get her beat Thursday in the $75,000 Peach of It Handicap.

Katie M’lady was one of six older Illinois-bred fillies and mares entered in the Peach of It, a 1 1/16-mile dirt race. Her main rival is Journeyist, also a Michele Boyce-trained stablemate, though Katie M’lady’s stiffest challenge probably is the 126 pounds she must carry in the Peach of It.