There are big races planned at Monmouth Park, Parx Racing, and Finger Lakes over the holiday weekend.

Monmouth is scheduled to run four stakes, topped by the Grade 1, $500,000 United Nations Stakes on Sunday. The United Nations, a 1 3/8-mile turf race, is a Win and You’re In race for the Breeders’ Cup Turf on Oct. 31 at Keeneland.

Parx will run its first graded stakes of the year, the Grade 3 Dr. James Penny Memorial Handicap, on Saturday. The $200,000 Dr. James Penny is a 1 1/16-mile turf race for fillies and mares.

The $300,000 Zia Park Oaks will again serve as the richest race at the Hobbs, N.M., track when it has its third running on Thanksgiving Eve, Nov. 25. The Oaks is part of a 33-race, $4 million stakes schedule Zia announced on Monday, with 19 of the stakes for Thoroughbreds. Zia opens a 56-date mixed meet that also features Quarter Horses on Sept. 12.

The U.S. Department of Labor has sued trainer Steve Asmussen with allegations that his stable is breaking federal labor law by not paying proper overtime to workers at Churchill Downs, in a lawsuit filed late last week in U.S. District Court in Louisville, Ky.

Sunday’s mandatory Rainbow 6 payoff at Gulfstream Park returned $30,929 to those who correctly selected all six winners in the sequence. The Rainbow 6 had gone unsolved over 24 programs since last being hit, also as a result of a mandatory payout, on May 22. A total of nearly $1.1 million was wagered into a Rainbow 6 pool that had a carryover of more than $380,000 entering Sunday’s card.

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Nobody would have blamed Tyler Gaffalione for becoming a little frustrated here this winter. Pitted against arguably the most talented jockey colony in the world, the young apprentice was having little luck finding the winner’s circle for much of the Gulfstream Park Championship meet.

But to Gaffalione’s credit, he channeled those frustrations into a learning experience.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia – It looks like a choice between Modern or Mr. Bowling in Wednesday’s $50,000 Lieutenant Governor’s Handicap at Hastings. The 1 1/16-mile race for 3-year-olds and up is the first of four stakes on the Canada Day Card, which begins at 1:50 p.m. Pacific.

ARCADIA, Calif. – Triple Crown hero American Pharoah is officially on the comeback trail.

On Monday at Santa Anita, American Pharoah worked three furlongs in 36.40 seconds under jockey Martin Garcia, his first major exercise since his historic win in the Belmont Stakes on June 6.

ARCADIA, Calif. – Simon Bray, a TVG racing commentator and former trainer, has been diagnosed with multiple myeloma and will undergo treatment this summer, TVG producer Kevin Grigsby said Saturday.

Bray, 45, is scheduled to undergo treatment for a recent back injury in coming weeks and will then begin chemotherapy treatment, Grigsby said.

In a statement released by TVG, Bray said the diagnosis was made after he underwent tests following the back injury.

Lone Star Park was forced to cancel its fifth through ninth races Friday night due to heavy rains and lightning, according to Diantha Brazzell, spokeswoman for the Grand Prairie, Texas, track. It was the fifth full or partial card cancellation at the meet, she said. The cancellations have all come at the hands of inclement weather.

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. -- The Illinois Thoroughbred Horsemen's Association successfully lobbied the Illinois Racing Board in a meeting this past Tuesday not to permit Arlington to run fewer than eight races per day, saying that if overall purse expenditures at the ongoing meet had to be reduced, they would prefer a purse cut to an immediate reduction in racing opportunities.

Arlington did not waste time in making the move to cut purses, with across-the-board reductions going into effect when condition book 4 begins on Thursday, July 2.