In an emotional start to the meet, trainer Tom Van Berg, who on Monday buried his father, Hall of Fame trainer Jack Van Berg, won the fifth race at Oaklawn Park with Profound Moment. The horse paid $37.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Weather permitting, there will be a nine-race card Monday, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, at Aqueduct, topped by the $100,000 Interborough Stakes for female sprinters, which drew a large, competitive field of 10.

Come Dancing, who has won both of her career starts – albeit 13 months apart – will step into stakes company for the first time for trainer Carlos Martin. Come Dancing won her career debut at Aqueduct on Nov. 6, 2016, by 3 1/2 lengths but was subsequently sidelined by a fractured pastern that required surgery.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – If a Grade 1 winner starts in the Grade 2 Wood Memorial, the purse of the race will be bumped to $1 million from its current level of $750,000, the New York Racing Association announced Friday. All horses who run in the race would run for the winner’s share of $1 million.

The Wood, which offers 170 qualifying points to the May 5 Kentucky Derby, is scheduled for April 7.

The Wood was a Grade 1 from 2002 to 2016 before being downgraded to a Grade 2 for the 2017 running. Its purse had been $1 million from 2011 to 2016.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – The New York Racing Association announced two bonus programs intended to boost field size for the Aqueduct and Belmont Park spring meets.

First, NYRA will offer a 30 percent winnings bonus and provide a $1,500 shipping stipend to the connections of a horse who starts at Aqueduct or Belmont after making its previous start at Oaklawn Park. The bonus is good for the horse’s first start at either Aqueduct’s spring meet, which runs April 6-22, or Belmont’s spring/summer meet, which runs April 27 through July 15.

HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – Ivan Fallunovalot, a two-time winner of the King Cotton at Oaklawn, launches his 8-year-old season Sunday in the eighth race at Oaklawn.

He goes in an optional $62,500 claiming sprint that also drew Grade 2 winner St. Joe Bay from the barn of trainer Peter Miller and Midwest stakes winners Recount, Storm Advisory, Apprehender, Rockshaw, Counterforce, and Wilbo.

The race will be run over six furlongs.

HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – Bob LaPenta won the last Triple Crown race run when Tapwrit, who he owns in partnership, took the Belmont Stakes in June. The cycle for 3-year-old stakes success starts over for the New York native on Monday when one of his promising young horses, Navistar, runs in the $150,000 Smarty Jones at Oaklawn Park.

LaPenta also owns the well-regarded Catholic Boy, who on Friday in Florida had his first work since winning the Grade 2 Remsen, and Montauk, a debut winner at Belmont whom he races in partnership with Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners.

ARCADIA, Calif. – Giant Expectations, upset winner of the Grade 2 San Antonio Stakes on Dec. 26 at Santa Anita, worked five furlongs in 58.80 seconds Friday in preparation for the $16 million Pegasus World Cup on Jan. 27 at Gulfstream Park.

Giant Expectations worked from the half-mile pole to the seven-eighths pole, a furlong past the finish line. Trainer Peter Eurton timed Giant Expectations in 46.80 for the first half-mile of the workout and galloping out six furlongs in 1:13.

ARCADIA, Calif. – Estrechada, the 7-year-old stakes winner, is based in California with trainer Mike Puype, but she is likely to appear at any racetrack in the nation that has a marathon turf stakes for fillies and mares.

Last August, Estrechada had a career-defining win in the Grade 3 Waya Stakes at 1 1/2 miles on turf at Saratoga.

For 2018, Puype plans to keep Estrechada active throughout the nation. Her first objective is a home game – Sunday’s $75,000 Astra Stakes at 1 1/2 miles on turf for fillies and mares.

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Two-time Eclipse Award-winning jockey Julien Leparoux was absent from riding at Gulfstream Park on Wednesday for good reason: He became a U.S. citizen at a ceremony in his adopted hometown of Louisville, Ky.

Leparoux, 34, first came to the United States from his native France in 2003. He began his riding career in the United States in 2005 and has become a perennial leading jockey at Keeneland and Churchill Downs while also competing regularly at Saratoga in the summer and Gulfstream in the winter.

McGaughey nears 2,000 mark

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Caledonia Road, winner of the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies in November, is scheduled to return to the track this coming week at Gulfstream, trainer Ralph Nicks said.

“We’ll start her out jogging and just ease her back into training,” Nicks said. “She’s been on a little break and is doing really well.”

Nicks said he is looking for two prep races, “depending on how everything goes,” for Caledonia Road leading into the May 4 Kentucky Oaks.