Shane Wilson has won the last three training titles at Louisiana Downs. His ascendance in Bossier City now has cut kitty-corner across Louisiana to New Orleans.

Through Sunday, Wilson had 15 Fair Grounds winners, nine more than Joe Sharp, whose six winners rank second among Fair Grounds trainers. Wilson’s volume of runners has been as surprising as his winners: Just 17 days into the 2023-24 season, Wilson already had 80 starters, 35 more than the next-highest total.

Though it offers a purse of just $100,000, the Gun Runner Stakes has yielded a Kentucky Derby runner in each of its first two years of existence, though Epicenter, the Derby runner-up in 2022, turned into a far more important horse than Jace’s Road, 17th in this year’s Derby.

Epicenter’s trainer, Steve Asmussen, and Jace’s Road’s trainer, Brad Cox, each have two entries in Saturday’s Gun Runner, which, along with the rest of an eight-stakes Dec. 23 card, was drawn this past Saturday.

High-class Fair Grounds-based 3-year-old filly sprinters Vahva and Alva Starr in a different year likely would be starting Dec. 26 at Santa Anita in the Grade 1 La Brea. Instead, the two fillies, respectively first and second last out in the Grade 2 Raven Run at Keeneland, are being aimed at lesser objectives.

Connections of the pair found a dearth of California-bound flights in December. Faced with the prospect of a 28-hour van trip, everyone took a pass.

Jockeys Tiago Pereira and Ramon Vazquez will serve three-day suspensions later this month after losing appeals of rulings issued during the Del Mar summer meeting.

Pereira and Vazquez appealed the summertime penalties to the California Horse Racing Board, but were rejected. Pereira’s suspension covers racing on Dec. 26 and 29-30, while Vazquez, currently riding at Oaklawn Park, has been suspended from Dec. 29-31.

Ruby Nell, a two-time stakes winner this fall, is expected to start in the $100,000 Lady of Shamrock Stakes at a mile on turf at Santa Anita on Dec. 31 instead of the Grade 1 American Oaks at 1 1/4 miles on Dec. 26, trainer Richard Mandella said Sunday.

Mandella said the shorter distance of the Lady of Shamrock Stakes has greater appeal than the $300,000 American Oaks. Both races are for 3-year-old fillies.

“I’m more likely to wait” for the Lady of Shamrock Stakes, he said.

Trainer Ed Moger Jr., a mainstay in Northern California for decades, will have a majority of his 40-horse stable at Santa Anita in Southern California this winter for the first time.

Moger said on Monday that the decision was prompted partially by a severe purse cut at Golden Gate Fields, announced earlier this month that takes effect with the opening of the track’s winter-spring meeting on Dec. 26.

New York-based trainer David Jacobson swept into Oaklawn Park on opening weekend and won with his first two starters on the first card of the meet Dec. 8. He’ll attempt to keep his momentum going Sunday with Kingdom.

Kingdom will represent the barn in the fifth race, a $50,000 starter allowance for 3-year-olds and up over six furlongs. He enters off a third-place finish in a Dec. 1 starter allowance at Aqueduct.

“I like the race for him,” Jacobson said. “I like that there appears to be very little speed, which he’s full of.”