ELMONT, N.Y. – In case you haven’t heard, this is the 50th anniversary of Secretariat’s Triple Crown tour de force.

And while those five weeks will always be memorable to racing historians and fans, so too is the five-week battle staged between Sunday Silence and Easy Goer 34 years ago. The stretch drive of the 1989 Preakness still resonates when people think about one of the best rivalries in racing. The nose victory by Sunday Silence over Easy Goer in the Preakness is something Easy Goer’s trainer, Shug McGaughey, says he still thinks about quite often.

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Handicappers will have a lot to ponder when trying to sort out Thursday’s $51,000 main event at Gulfstream Park, most notably what to do with Anna’s Dream, who may go postward a tepid favorite despite returning from a 4 1/2-month layoff, and how to deal with Chilean-bred stablemates Practica Cat and Soy Una Dama in their U.S. debuts.

The headliner is carded for fillies and mares and will be contested at six furlongs over the main track.

A new trainer has not yet been named for 2022 Kentucky Derby winner Rich Strike, but owner Rick Dawson indicated that he plans for the colt to remain based in Kentucky.

Dawson wrote on his Facebook page that his horses were moved on Saturday from former trainer Eric Reed’s Mercury Equine Center in Lexington to Blackwood Stables in Versailles, on the other side of town. Blackwood, a full breaking, training, and lay-up facility, has a six-furlong dirt track and a turf course and is accredited for public official workouts.

Churchill Downs opens another four-day racing week Thursday, with a pair of allowance-level turf races for fillies and mares topping the card as nominal features.

The fourth race on Thursday’s card is a $127,000 allowance going 1 3/8 miles. Hay Stack, racing for Peter Brant and Chad Brown, tangled with eventual stakes fillies in several key maiden races, and finally broke through last time when given more distance, rallying to win by a head going 1 1/8 miles at Keeneland. She gets even more ground to work with here.

Smile Happy and Played Hard, both of whom scored major victories on the first weekend in May, are among those expected to line up for another marquee card at Churchill Downs on the first weekend of July.

Trainer Kenny McPeek confirmed that Smile Happy is pointing to the Grade 1, $1 million Stephen Foster on July 1, a race that will award its winner a berth in the Breeders’ Cup Classic this November at Santa Anita.

National Treasure is considered one of the primary challengers to Kentucky Derby winner Mage in the Preakness Stakes. Passing on the Kentucky Derby worked out well for one of the most prominent names deep in National Treasure’s family. His female line traces directly to Masda, full sister to the great Man o’ War, who skipped the 1920 Kentucky Derby before dominating the Preakness and Belmont Stakes.

Coffeewithchris, who is trying to become the first Maryland-bred in four decades to win his birth state’s biggest race, has already been a breakthrough horse for current National Thoroughbred Racing Association president and CEO Tom Rooney, as the first stakes winner he has bred.

The magic long associated with one of America’s most prominent classic sirelines glittered through with Kentucky Derby winner Mage. He is by champion Good Magic, the latest wizard in this family, as the second son of two-time Horse of the Year Curlin in a row to sire the Derby winner from his first crop. The 2023 Triple Crown now moves on to the Preakness Stakes, a race with which this family has worked particular alchemy.

BALTIMORE – Twenty-three horses entered the Kentucky Derby. Twenty were permitted to run. After five scratches, 18 actually did compete at Churchill Downs on May 6.

Of the 18, only the winner, Mage, was entered to run in Saturday’s 148th Preakness Stakes at Pimlico. Mage was expected to head an eight-horse field entered Monday in the Preakness, post positions for which were to be drawn early Monday evening.

Golden Gate Fields will operate an 18-day late summer and autumn meeting on a Saturday-through-Monday basis this year, eliminating racing on Fridays during the six-week season that begins Aug. 26.

General manager David Duggan said Sunday that a move to Monday racing will be an attempt to boost handle for the Northern California track on a day in which few tracks operate after Labor Day.

“Until we try to change things a little bit, we won’t be moving the needle,” Duggan said.