HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – Stakes winner Just Steel will remove blinkers for the Southwest, trainer D. Wayne Lukas said Tuesday. The horse is coming off a runner-up finish in the Smarty Jones, a race in which he tracked the pace, took the lead, and was overtaken in the later stages by the stretch-running Catching Freedom.

Just Steel came into the Smarty Jones off a win in the Ed Brown Stakes at Churchill Downs.

“I’m going to take the blinkers off,” Lukas said. “I just think he doesn’t need them. They weren’t very big – he had a small cup on them. We’ll make the change.”

HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – Trainer Cipriano Contreras and his nephew, jockey Emmanuel Esquivel, are off to a fast start at Oaklawn.

“We got lucky a couple of horses ran okay early in the meet,” Contreras said. “Sometimes you get a good start. Sometimes you end up doing okay. Sometimes nothing goes your way. When you win a race, you better have a good dinner. It might be a good while before you get a good dinner again.”

From all accounts, both men are eating well.

HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – The unbeaten and untested Carbone likely will make his next start in the Grade 3, $800,000 Southwest Stakes at Oaklawn Park, trainer Steve Asmussen said Tuesday.

The 1 1/16-mile race will reward its first five finishers Kentucky Derby points on a scale of 20-10-6-4-2. The Southwest anchors a card of four stakes Jan. 27.

Carbone has won his two career starts by a combined 12 lengths. He earned a Beyer Speed Figure of 85 in November, when he won a maiden special weight by eight lengths over Goldbrick, who is a half-brother to millionaire Mr. Wireless.

ARCADIA, Calif. – Tamara, the winner of the Grade 1 Del Mar Debutante in September, continues to recover from a splint bone injury detected after she finished seventh as the beaten favorite in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies at Santa Anita in November.

Trainer Richard Mandella said that Tamara will be transferred next week from a local farm to a lay-up facility operated by Julie Adair to begin light activity. Mandella said he does not expect Tamara to rejoin his Santa Anita stable until later in February.

“Whenever she’s back, she’s back,” Mandella said.

ARCADIA, Calif. – Easter, the impressive winner of three turf stakes in Southern California in his final three starts of 2023, will have a delayed 2024 debut in the Grade 1 Frank Kilroe Mile at Santa Anita on March 2.

Trainer Phil D’Amato said over the weekend that he would prefer to start Easter’s season in the $300,000 Kilroe on turf instead of the Grade 3 Thunder Road Stakes at a mile on turf on Feb. 3. The long-range goal is the Breeders’ Cup Mile at Del Mar on Nov. 2.

ARCADIA, Calif. – Mici’s Express won his 3-year-old debut in Saturday’s $188,000 California Cup Derby for statebreds at Santa Anita.

But instead of being a prep for a challenging start in a graded stakes in coming weeks or months, Mici’s Express is going to the sidelines.

“I’ll turn him out for awhile,” trainer Steve Knapp said on Sunday. “He’s run hard enough. He deserves time off.”