Sharp Azteca figures to be favored over 13 others Saturday in the $100,000 Prelude Stakes at Louisiana Downs. He is invading from Monmouth Park for the race, which serves as the local prep for the Grade 3, $400,000 Super Derby.

The Prelude will be part of a program of seven stakes worth a total of $450,000. The other races form the Louisiana Cup, with a marquee matchup of The Pickett Factor and millionaires String King and Sunbean in the $75,000 Turf Classic. The stakes are the first of the meet at Louisiana Downs.

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – As the rain fell outside of his office door Sunday morning, trainer Chad Brown was quite thankful that the Grade 2 Bowling Green Handicap had been run the previous day.

Brown had selected the $250,000 Bowling Green for Flintshire because he wanted to run the horse on firm ground. The rain began to fall late Saturday night, continued through Sunday, and forced that day’s six turf races to be run on the main track.

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Off the Tracks, the winner of the Grade 1 Mother Goose in her last start, will run in Saturday’s Grade 1, $500,000 Test Stakes for 3-year-old fillies at seven furlongs, trainer Todd Pletcher said Sunday.

Off the Tracks also was under consideration for the Grade 1 Alabama at 1 1/4 miles on Aug. 20.

“She’s ready to run now,” Pletcher said. “She had success around one turn sprinting before. Felt like right now, at this moment, it’s a more logical play than waiting on the mile and a quarter.”

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Aron Wellman believes that when you have a hot hand, you’ve got to keep playing it. Thus, Wellman’s Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners, fresh off a two-win Sunday at Saratoga, will take a swing in Saturday’s Grade 1, $1.25 million Whitney Stakes with Comfort.

Comfort himself is hot, having won his two starts this year and three straight dating back to last November. But even Wellman said that Comfort will be taking “a colossal step up in class” against the likes of Grade 1 winners Frosted, Effinex, and Noble Bird in the Whitney.

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Trainer Arnaud Delacour said A. P. Indian appears to have come out of his victory in Saturday’s Grade 1 Alfred G. Vanderbilt in good order and that the Grade 1 Forego on Aug. 27 is definitely on his radar.

A. P. Indian posted his fourth victory in a row – the last three since Joe Bravo became his rider – and gave Delacour the first Grade 1 win of his training career. He won by 1 1/4 lengths over Holy Boss in the six-furlong Vanderbilt.

Corey Lanerie became the 70th jockey in North American racing history to hit the 4,000-win mark when guiding Crooked Stick to victory for trainer Alex Clarkson in the seventh race Sunday at Ellis Park in western Kentucky.

Lanerie, 41, had won the previous race aboard Taliaferro County.

Jockey Victor Espinoza won the Clement Hirsch on Stellar Wind, narrowly defeating Gary Stevens and Beholder. It was a near carbon-copy of the San Diego Handicap the previous Saturday, when Espinoza, on California Chrome, got the best of Dortmund and Stevens after a similar, stretch-long duel. The victories were important ones for Espinoza, who spent much of the first half of the year traveling, but is staying close to home this summer.

 “We’re getting consistency to our business. It’s hard when you’re on the road,” said his agent, Brian Beach.

DEL MAR, Calif. – The plans for Stellar Wind for the late summer and fall had been set in stone even before she defeated Beholder in the Grade 1 Clement Hirsch Stakes on Saturday, but the loss by Beholder may alter her near-term schedule, putting in jeopardy a title defense against males in Del Mar’s biggest race of the summer, the Grade 1, $1 million Pacific Classic on Aug. 20.

 Stellar Wind has had the Breeders’ Cup Distaff on Nov. 4 at Santa Anita as her year-end goal, and she’ll race just once before that, in the Grade 1 Zenyatta at Santa Anita on Oct. 1.

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - Trainer Eric Guillot is still haunted by the 2013 Travers.

The Guillot-trained Moreno, a 31-1 shot, looked like he was going to upset the Travers only to get nailed in the final jump by Will Take Charge.

“That hurt me. That took something off my life,” Guillot said. “There were 50,000 people roaring. I wanted all of them to go home. I wanted my pirogue [canoe in French] painted.”

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Tencendur, the runner-up in last year’s Grade 1 Wood Memorial and Ohio Derby, returns from a 13-month layoff in a first-level New York-bred allowance race going 1 1/8 miles on Monday at Saratoga.

Tencendur, a son of Warrior’s Reward trained by George Weaver for Phil Birsh, has not run since getting beat a nose by Mr. Z in the $500,000 Ohio Derby in June 2015. That race followed a 17th-place finish in the Kentucky Derby.

While training for the Jim Dandy Stakes last summer, Tencendur fractured a sesamoid and needed surgery and recuperative time.