The nine-race Friday card at Aqueduct is topped by a first-level New York-bred optional-claiming race for fillies and mares and includes a first-level allowance turf sprint and four maiden races. The trouble is, autumn has suddenly started to look like the beginning of an early winter and four of the day’s races are scheduled for turf.

Aqueduct was off the grass Wednesday, and the first hard freeze of the season was expected Thursday morning. There is the possibility of sleet and ice Thursday afternoon with rain continuing into Friday morning.

Mind Your Biscuits, winner of the last two editions of the Group 1 Golden Shaheen on Dubai World Cup Day, was retired Wednesday morning by trainer Chad Summers after he didn’t gallop to expectations at Belmont Park.

Summers had been considering a final career start for Mind Your Biscuits – either the Grade 1 Cigar Mile or the Grade 1 Clark – but the 5-year-old has been slow to recover from his 11th-place finish in the Breeders’ Cup Classic.

On weekdays in real life, David Atwell is a mild-mannered certified public account in Northern California. On weekends, Atwell dons a Superman cape, flies to Southern California racetracks, and chases his second calling as a high-stakes horseplayer and owner.

Exactly one week after he won the Santa Anita closing-day pick six for a paltry $601, Atwell hit a home run Sunday at Del Mar. His $1,152 combination wager included the only winning pick six ticket, good for a single-ticket jackpot payoff of $138,889.

ETOBICOKE, Ontario — Reigning Canadian Horse of the Year Pink Lloyd is done racing for the year, but he should be back for another campaign in 2019. The popular 6-year-old bled while finishing fourth last out in the Oct. 27 Overskate Stakes.

DEL MAR, Calif. – Trainer Bill Spawr has a long history of claiming horses and turning them into stakes winners. Risky Proposition, who won the Let It Ride on Saturday, is the latest addition to a list that includes Exchange, My Sonny Boy, Restage, Sensational Star, and Skye Diamonds.

“I never get tired of it,” Spawr said. “They’re like little kids to me. It’s fun seeing how they mature and develop.”

Spawr said the biggest change with Risky Prosposition since he claimed him during the summer has been “mentally.”

DEL MAR, Calif. – Chasing Yesterday doesn’t look like American Pharoah, doesn’t move like American Pharoah, and won’t have the same story arc as her older half-brother. But being the younger half-sister to the first Triple Crown winner in 37 years, “she’s royalty,” said her trainer, Bob Baffert.

Her residual value is assured, and she’s doing pretty well on the track, too. She won for the third time in four starts in the Desi Arnaz Stakes here at Del Mar on Monday, and now will shoot for her first graded stakes win in the Grade 1 Starlet at Los Alamitos on Dec. 8, Baffert said.

DEL MAR, Calif. – Point Piper, a former stakes-class runner who raced primarily in claiming races this year at age 8, was claimed for $10,000 on Monday at Del Mar by trainer Jonathan Wong in a two-way shake and will be retired to stud, Wong said. Point Piper had been with Jerry Hollendorfer.

“The plan is for him to leave to the farm tomorrow to begin his retirement,” Wong wrote on Twitter.

MIAMI – Thursday’s main event, a $47,000 optional-claiming dash at six furlongs, will mark the local return of the venerable Delta Bluesman, still going strong at the age of 8 for trainer Jorge Navarro.

Winter in New Orleans means Mardi Gras season. It means cold spells where the air’s deep dampness makes 30 degrees feel Arctic. And it also usually means a very fast filly stabled on the Fair Grounds backstretch. Last year it was Monomoy Girl, who came out of the Fair Grounds to win the Kentucky Oaks. That has happened three times the last five years, four times in the last seven, and six of 11.

MIAMI – Even though she was considered an outsider going into the race, trainer Stanley Gold was looking forward to trying his steadily improving Cookie Dough against the best of her division in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies earlier this month at Churchill Downs. Unfortunately, he never got that chance.