ARCADIA, Calif. – This has already been a record-breaking spring for Hall of Fame jockey Mike Smith in the buildup to the Triple Crown.

Smith is bound for the Kentucky Derby on May 2 with So Happy, winner of Saturday’s Grade 1 Santa Anita Derby. The victory made Smith, 59, the oldest rider to win the track’s marquee race for 3-year-olds. Bill Shoemaker was 55 when he won his eighth Santa Anita Derby on Temperate Sil in 1987.

“I’ll take it,” Smith said of his latest milestone.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Fusaichi Pegasus, in 2000, won the Wood Memorial and three weeks later came back to win the Kentucky Derby. Monarchos (2001) and Funny Cide (2003) came out of runner-up finishes in the Wood to also bring home the roses in Louisville.

Since then, however, the Wood has produced 43 Kentucky Derby starters, not one able to cross the wire better than fourth, though Tacitus was elevated to third via the disqualification of Maximum Security in 2019. 

LEXINGTON, Ky. – He hit the mark in the Blue Grass Stakes, winning his first Grade 1 for owner Spendthrift Farm, which, not coincidentally, is in the business of standing stallions. He posted the widest margin of victory in any major Kentucky Derby prep, and no Derby starter will bring to the race a speed figure higher than the 106 Beyer he earned here Saturday.

All that, and, obviously, trainer Brad Cox hopes Further Ado is not done yet.

The $100,000 John Shear Stakes for 3-year-old turf sprinters was scheduled for Sunday at Santa Anita, but failed to draw sufficient entries.

Sunday is the closing day of the track’s winter-spring meeting.

Racing secretary Jason Egan said on Thursday that the Shear Stakes will be reintroduced as a potential race for the opening day of the track’s spring meeting, on April 17. The Shear Stakes is scheduled for about 6 1/2 furlongs on the hillside turf course.

The spring meeting runs through June 14.

Vodka Vodka, winner of the Unusual Heat Turf Classic for statebreds at Santa Anita in January, will start outside of California for the first time in Sunday’s $250,000 Sunland Park Stakes at 1 1/8 miles in New Mexico.

Vodka Vodka was second by 4 1/2 lengths to British Isles in the Grade 1 Santa Anita Handicap at 1 1/4 miles on dirt in his last start on March 7. Trainer Aggie Ordonez said the Sunland Park Stakes had appeal because of the distance and the surface.

“We would have loved to stay home, but there was not an option,” Ordonez said. “I wanted to keep him on dirt.

Lovesick Blues, a 2025 Grade 1 winner who was unplaced in two $2 million sprints in Saudi Arabia and Dubai in recent months, is scheduled to return to trainer Librado Barocio’s California stable in coming days.

It may not be long before Lovesick Blues is back in action.

Barocio said earlier this week that he hopes to start Lovesick Blues in the $100,000 Thor’s Echo Stakes for California-breds at six furlongs at Santa Anita on May 23.

The final winter meet at Aqueduct won’t be remembered fondly. Not only was the weather brutal, so too was business.

All-sources handle for the three-month winter session (Jan. 1-March 29) was $194,567,766, a 23.9 percent decrease from the 2025 winter meet during which handle was $255,640,649, according to figures provided by the New York Racing Association.