ETOBICOKE, Ontario – The Jockey Club of Canada has announced the appointed of three new stewards and 22 new members following its annual meeting here at Woodbine Racetrack on June 25.

The new JCC stewards are Nick Eaves, president and CEO of the Woodbine Entertainment Group; Frank Di Giulio Jr., a longtime owner and breeder whose horses are trained by Bob Tiller; and Robert Krembil, an owner and breeder who races and breeds horses along with his son, Mark, from his nearby Chiefswood Farm base.

They replace the retiring Dick Bonnycastle, Glenn Sikura, and Harvey Tenenbaum.

Just about everything anyone needs to know about the contours of the jockey landscape in Southern California was distilled in the running of this year’s Gamely Handicap at Hollywood Park on Memorial Day.

From the moment Celtic Princess took the early lead from Dubawi Heights, right where the infield chute joins the main track in front of the tote board, Rafael Bejarano and Joel Rosario were in command of the quarter-million-dollar race.

Grade inflation is a term typically used in the academic world, but the racing industry has its own version: The number of graded stakes in the sport is not contracting as fast as the number of races, introducing the possibility that competition at the sport’s highest level is being diluted by a glut of graded stakes.

There is a reasonable chance you may hear a loud cheer coming from the backstretch as the pacers head down the stretch in the $1 million Meadowlands Pace on Saturday. Forty percent of the field in the prestigious final has roots a few hundred miles in that direction, over the border in Canada.

Year after year owners and trainers ship down from Canada to find success and 2011 is no different. Trainer Blair Burgess has won a pair of Paces with Frugal Gourmet (1987) and Real Desire (2001).

One of only four jockeys to win an Eclipse award as an apprentice (2006) and a journeyman (2009). Leparoux, the son of an assistant trainer, came to California in the fall of 2003 to work for trainer Patrick Biancone and began riding races in 2005, in Kentucky. Leparoux won three Breeders’ Cup races in 2009. He was leading rider at the Keeneland and Churchill spring meets this year and will ride the upcoming Saratoga meet. Daily Racing Form caught up with him during a visit to Arlington Park on July 9.

Birthdate: July 15, 1983, in Senlis, France

Winning the Meadowlands Pace can be a daunting task. Now try accomplishing it with a horse that never raced as a 2-year-old. In the previous 34 editions of the Pace, only Allamerican Theory achieved that feat back in 2003.

That is the mission faced by trainer Casie Coleman and her top sophomore student Betterthancheddar, whose only action as a 2-year-old was a pair of qualifiers.

The 2011 edition of the Meadowlands Pace has good storylines and a wide-open field to entice fans and bettors. It is missing something, though: John Campbell. Since 1981, Campbell and the Meadowlands Pace have been joined at the hip. For the first time in 30 editions of this marquee event, Campbell will not line up behind the starting gate.

Campbell, the all-time leader in driver earnings, was injured in an accident at Harrah's Chester on May 31. He suffered a broken collarbone, broken shoulder blade, cracked ribs, and broken bone in his knee.

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Robert Manfuso and Richard Santulli were both re-elected to positions on the Breeders’ Cup board of directors during elections conducted the past week, Breeders’ Cup said on Wednesday.

Manfuso, the owner of Maryland’s Chanceland Farm, and Santulli, a partner in Jayeff B Stable, were two of six candidates seeking election to three open seats on the board. The other director elected to the 13-member board was newcomer Bret Jones, the manager of bloodstock services for Airdrie Stud and the son of Airdrie’s owner, former Kentucky Gov. Brereton C. Jones.

The Racing Medication and Testing Consortium has scheduled a meeting for Aug. 4 near Cincinnati that will include a discussion about recent proposals to prohibit the raceday use of Lasix and other drugs to treat bleeding in the lungs, the organization announced on Wednesday.