HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – The second running of the $16 million Pegasus World Cup suddenly got a little more interesting with the announcement that Cigar Mile winner and Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile runner-up Sharp Azteca will join a field that was already expected to include Horse of the Year favorite Gun Runner, Collected, and West Coast.

There may not have been a more impressive 2-year-old debut winner in 2017 than Strike Power, who won his only start by eight lengths while earning a 102 Beyer Speed Figure at Gulfstream Park on Dec. 23. The question now is what does trainer Mark Hennig do next with the speedy son of Speightstown?

Strike Power had his first breeze since that performance here last Friday, a very easy half-mile in 50.25.

The Ortiz brothers combined to win nine races at Gulfstream Park this past weekend, five by Jose and four by Irad. Jose Ortiz captured a pair of stakes as part of a hat trick on Saturday’s card. Irad, who began riding here on a full-time basis just last Friday, posted doubles on both Saturday and Sunday.

Luis Saez continues to show the way in the jockey standings with 42 victories, eight more than Tyler Gaffalione.

Turf allowances featured

The works were unconventional but served their purpose.

Bob Baffert chose to work the Grade 1 winners Collected and West Coast on Santa Anita’s infield training track on Monday in advance of the $16 million Pegasus World Cup at Gulfstream Park on Jan. 27. Baffert wanted to work the pair on the main track, but that track was closed because of expected wet weather on Monday.

Instead, West Coast worked six furlongs in 1:13, while Collected worked in 1:13.40 on the training track, which is slightly longer than six furlongs in circumference.

ARCADIA, Calif. – Eye of the River will be a longshot in a $20,000 claiming race for maidens on Thursday at Santa Anita.

Sadly, the filly’s trainer, Martine Bellocq, remains hospitalized in San Diego with second- and third-degree burns over 50 percent of her body sustained in the wildfire that struck the San Luis Rey Downs training center in San Diego County on Dec. 7.

ARCADIA, Calif. – The breakthrough performance by Midnight Bisou in Sunday’s seven-furlong Santa Ynez Stakes – her first win – has trainer Bill Spawr ready to send her a little farther.

“I think she’ll get a mile,” he said, while walking from the winner’s circle to the paddock late Sunday afternoon.

Spawr and his clients Bloom Racing and Allen Racing will not have to wait long to give Midnight Bisou such a test. The one-mile Las Virgenes Stakes, a Grade 2, $200,000 race, is set for Feb. 4, the afternoon of the Super Bowl.

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Heart to Heart, a standout turf miler over the last few seasons, will make his 7-year-old debut in the Grade 2 Fort Lauderdale, one of three graded stakes set for Saturday at Gulfstream.

An earner of more than $1.5 million, all for owner Terry Hamilton and trainer Brian Lynch, Heart to Heart figures to be a heavy favorite in the Fort Lauderdale at 1 1/16 miles on turf. With regular jockey Julien Leparoux riding Saturday at Fair Grounds, the mount goes to Irad Ortiz Jr.

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Trainer Kevin Attard is able to keep closer tabs on his horses than, say, his first cousins. His father, trainer Tino Attard, was the ninth of 26 children, with four of the boys migrating to Canada while most of their siblings stayed behind in their homeland of Malta.

Nominations are out for a trio of stakes that mark the first big stakes day of 2018 at Tampa. Those Jan. 20 races, labeled as the Skyway Festival, are the $125,000 Pasco for 3-year-olds and the $125,000 Gasparilla for 3-year-old fillies, both at seven furlongs, and the $50,000 Wayward Lass for fillies and mares at 1 1/16 miles.

The first graded races of the year at Tampa will be run Feb. 10 when the Grade 3 Sam F. Davis Stakes, a Kentucky Derby points event, heads a group of four stakes.

Never in 35 years of riding had Jose Ferrer been injured so badly. A September spill left Ferrer with eight fractured ribs and a collapsed lung, but the jockey has healed with a vengeance.

“I feel better than I ever have,” said Ferrer, 53. “Getting hurt like that, it makes you appreciate what you have. Your eyes are open big.”