Trainer Al Stall started the Fair Grounds meet on fire, and after an inevitable cooling-off period, he has maintained an excellent strike rate. Through last Sunday, Stall had won with 25 of his 86 starters at the meet, a 29 percent win rate.

Stall, who has been the leading trainer twice at Fair Grounds, won’t come near his career-best Fair Grounds win total, 42 in 1997-98, but if his stable’s form holds, he’ll finish the season at his home track with his highest win percentage since that meet. Stall, too, has been a boon to his backers, producing a $2.31 return on investment.

With four racing weeks remaining in the 2016-17 Fair Grounds meet, the race for leading trainer is up for grabs. Through Sunday, six trainers each had 22 to 31 winners at the meet, all of them one hot streak away from a title.

Brad Cox has been atop the leaderboard much of the winter and still has a meet-best 31 winners, but no Fair Grounds barn has been rolling like Steve Asmussen’s.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Trainer Leon Blusiewicz turned 86 last month. Blusiewicz acknowledges that he’s not as strong as he used to be despite swimming and riding a stationary bicycle every day, but he’s still as ambitious.

“I’m prehistoric,” Blusiewicz said. “I’d never thought I’d last this long. I’ve had a good life, had a lot of fun, met a lot of nice people. The game’s been good to me.”

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – High Ridge Road, the winner of the Grade 2 Barbara Fritchie at Laurel Park on Feb. 18, returned to the work tab Wednesday, breezing five furlongs in 1:02.02 over the Belmont Park training track.

Trainer Linda Rice said she moved the work up a few days to take advantage of a training track that she felt was in good shape.

Trainer Bret Calhoun has the probable favorites in a pair of Friday night stakes races at Sam Houston in More Than Most and Kat’s Infatuation. More Than Most will be looking for her fifth career stakes victory in the $50,000 San Jacinto, while Kat’s Infatuation brings a strong last-race Beyer Speed Figure into the $50,000 Bara Lass.

ARCADIA, Calif. – Cautious Giant, who was claimed for $62,500 on March 2, was withdrawn from consideration for Saturday’s Grade 1 Santa Anita Handicap on Wednesday after he failed to train well that morning, owner Ron Paolucci and trainer Bob Hess Jr. said.

Cautious Giant was supplemented to the Big Cap for $15,000 last Saturday.

“He was a little sluggish when he went to the track,” Paolucci said. “If he wasn’t perfect, I won’t run him. I thought he had a shot.”

In a text message, Hess described Cautious Giant as “flat” in a morning gallop.

ARCADIA, Calif. – Zapperkat missed the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies at Santa Anita last November after undergoing surgery to have a bone chip removed from a knee. Her connections hope Zapperkat can start in another leading race for the division – the Grade 1 Kentucky Oaks at Churchill Downs on May 5 – if she runs well in an optional claimer at 6 1/2 furlongs at Santa Anita on Friday and then in an April prep for the Oaks.

ARCADIA, Calif. – In his 14-race career, Masochistic has won eight races, three graded stakes, and been disqualified from purse money twice for medication violations.

In November, Masochistic was second in the Breeders’ Cup Sprint at Santa Anita, but he was later disqualified because of a steroid positive. In January, the Breeders’ Cup announced that Masochistic is banned from any Breeders’ Cup race at Del Mar in November, as are all runners from trainer Ron Ellis’s stable.

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Trainer Todd Pletcher said Wednesday that Malagacy, untested in a pair of sprints at this meet to begin his career, will make his next start at Oaklawn Park in the Grade 2, $900,000 Rebel Stakes on March 18.

Malagacy, by Shackleford, won a 5 1/2-furlong maiden race by 15 lengths and a 6 1/2-furlong optional-claiming race by seven lengths.

Carlos Carrasco, the 18-year-old younger brother of top Maryland rider Victor Carrasco, won with the first two mounts of his career at Laurel Park last Saturday.

Carrasco scored a 15-1 front-running upset aboard the Jose Corrales-trained Wilko’s Last Dance in race 3 and came right back to win the fourth on 3-5 favorite Speightshill for trainer Jonathan Maldonado.