Trainer Jimmy Padgett is closing out a strong meet at the Downs at Albuquerque and the barn has not even called on its biggest gun, Jessies First Down.

That will change Sunday, when the two-time world champion runs in the $300,000 Fall Quarter Horse Championship.

ARCADIA, Calif. – Gift Box, fourth in the 2016 Travers Stakes but unraced since a win at Aqueduct in March, has been bought by California-based owners Pete and Kosta Hronis, trainer John Sadler said.

Sadler said Gift Box will join his stable this fall and be pointed for a 2019 campaign at Santa Anita.

“He can be a player in the handicap division,” Sadler said.

CYPRESS, Calif. – Mucho Gusto is the latest in a remarkable string of 2-year-old winners for trainer Bob Baffert in the last 60 days.

On Thursday at Los Alamitos, Mucho Gusto led throughout a maiden special weight race at six furlongs to post a four-length victory in his career debut. Since the beginning of the Del Mar summer meeting on July 18 and through Thursday at Los Alamitos, Baffert has won 12 maiden special weight races with 2-year-olds and one stakes –the Grade 1 Del Mar Futurity with Game Winner.

ARCADIA, Calif. – Kyle Frey, the champion apprentice jockey of 2011, will be sidelined until next summer after sustaining a knee injury when he was unseated in a post parade at Del Mar in July.

Frey is scheduled to meet with an orthopedic surgeon on Thursday to discuss surgical options for a torn anterior cruciate ligament, according to his agent, Bill Sadoo.

“If he makes it back in a year, it would be good,” Sadoo said. “Maybe next summer at Del Mar. We’ll be trying for that.”

ELMONT, N.Y. – Shirley Day Smith, who spent more than 60 years as an administrative assistant in the press office at the New York Racing Association and its predecessors, died Thursday after a brief illness. She was 99.

Smith began working in racing before women were allowed to work at the track, and worked out of offices in Manhattan, according to a friend, the freelance writer Paula Rodenas.

CYPRESS, Calif. –Lovely Finish was being walked back to the Los Alamitos stables late Thursday afternoon when trainer Joe Herrick began to plot her next race.

Minutes earlier, Lovely Finish had run third in a maiden special weight sprint for California-breds, her first start since November – and first since Lovely Finish sustained burns in the devastating fire that struck the San Luis Rey Downs training center in December. Lovely Finish was burned on her head, neck, and back, and the 56-year-old Herrick was hospitalized with burns on his head and neck.

ELMONT, N.Y. – One week after working a fast five furlongs in 58.90 seconds, Diversify came back with a nearly identical five-furlong drill in 58.80 seconds Friday morning over the main track at Belmont Park as he aims for a repeat victory in next Saturday’s Grade 1, $750,000 Jockey Club Gold Cup.

With jockey Irad Ortiz Jr. in the irons for the second straight week, Diversify went in splits of 11.62, 23.03, and 34.31 before coming home in 24.49. He galloped out six furlongs in 1:12.20 and seven-eighths in 1:26.30.

The saga involving The Player continues in remarkable fashion.

After being gravely injured in the New Orleans Handicap at Fair Grounds on March 24, the 5-year-old horse was shipped Friday to the Indian Ridge Farm of owner-trainer Buff Bradley in Frankfort, Ky., following lengthy rehabilitation of his right foreleg at the Louisiana State University veterinary clinic.

Bradley and longtime partner Carl Hurst spared no expense in extending the life of The Player, a multiple graded winner of $452,485 from 14 starts.

ELMONT, N.Y. – Thunder Snow, the Dubai World Cup winner, arrived at Belmont Park at around 3 a.m. Friday to prepare for a two-race fall campaign in the U.S. that will include next Saturday’s Grade 1, $750,000 Jockey Club Gold Cup and the Breeders’ Cup Classic.

Thunder Snow arrived following a flight that began in Cambridge, England, and included a four-hour layover in Liege, Belgium, according to Tom Burns, the head traveling lad for trainer Saeed bin Suroor.

“He’s a really good traveler; he takes it all in stride,” Burns said.

Back-to-back allowances with oversubscribed fields anchor a 10-race Sunday card that concludes a four-day race week at Churchill.

Race 8 is a $60,000, second-level turf route in which Lilt and Tocame Linda figure as the fillies to beat. Eleven are entered, but only as many as nine can start in the 1 1/8-mile race.

Race 9 is a $58,000, first-level allowance race at 6 1/2 furlongs, with Rubus and Most Amusing likely to draw serious attention among a full lineup of 3- and 4-year-olds.