HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – Private Prospect brought a tidy record into last year’s Breeders’ Cup Juvenile at Santa Anita. The multiple stakes winner had won 3 of 4 career starts, with his lone loss coming by a head when he finished second in the Grade 3 Arlington Washington Futurity.

NEW ORLEANS – Pedro Zavala, the track superintendent at Fair Grounds, said Wednesday morning that he planned to blade and work the racing surface Wednesday afternoon in an effort to change the complexion of the main track.

NEW ORLEANS – West Coast Belle, undefeated in three starts and the winner of the Grade 2 Golden Rod in her most recent race, was credited with a half-mile work in 51.20 seconds at Fair Grounds on Wednesday, though trainer Wayne Catalano said West Coast Belle was not scheduled for an official work.

“We just two-minute-clipped her – open her lungs up a little before the race – and they caught her going an easy half,” said Catalano, who trains West Coast Belle for Gary and Mary West.

NEW ORLEANS – Give a horseman a choice between a talented early-season 3-year-old with size and scope and a more diminutive model, and – particularly with classic-race aspirations in mind – he probably will choose the big horse. But bigger is not always better. Young horses of large size need more time to grow into their frame, to figure out how their bodies work at peak speed.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Micromanage, who perhaps ran the best race of his career when he won the Queens County Stakes last month at Aqueduct, will run back in Monday’s $100,000 Jazil Stakes here, trainer Todd Pletcher said Wednesday.

Micromanage won three races from 11 starts in 2014, all at 1 1/16 miles or longer. He won the Birdstone Stakes at 1 3/4 miles at Saratoga and the Grade 3 Skip Away Stakes at 1 3/16 miles at Gulfstream. The Jazil will be run at a mile and 70 yards.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Willet, who has won four New York-bred stakes, will try to win her first open stakes race when she takes on six rivals in Saturday’s $100,000 Interborough Stakes at Aqueduct. Willet drew post 3 in a field of seven entered Wednesday.

Sam Houston Race Park opens Friday night with its biggest program of racing on the immediate horizon. The track will be hosting the Houston Ladies Classic on Jan. 24, with the $400,000 race for fillies and mares anchoring a card of four stakes that also includes the Grade 3, $200,000 Connally Turf Cup.

“We’re always excited this time of year,” said Andrea Young, president of the Houston track owned in partnership by Maxxam and Penn National Gaming.

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Jockey Rajiv Maragh, who suffered a broken right arm when he was unseated from Wicked Strong during the running of the Jockey Club Gold Cup nearly four months ago, returns to the saddle Friday aboard the veteran turf specialist Sky Blazer in the afternoon’s featured ninth race.

Maragh spent almost three months in therapy rehabbing his arm before starting to get on horses again two weeks ago at Palm Meadows.

He reunites with Sky Blazer, whom he guided to a third-place finish in the Grade 2 Bowling Green Handicap early last summer at Belmont Park.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Jerome Stakes winner El Kabeir is expected to return to the work tab this weekend and most likely will run in the Grade 3, $250,000 Withers Stakes at Aqueduct on Feb. 7, trainer John Terranova said Wednesday.

“Nothing, I guess, is set in stone, but that’s what we’re pointing for right now,” he said. “Everything seems to be really good.”

Shared Belief, the champion 2-year-old male of 2013, worked five furlongs in 1:00.80 on Tuesday at Golden Gate Fields, moving closer to a highly anticipated showdown with California Chrome in the $500,000 San Antonio Stakes on Feb. 7.

Trained by Hollendorfer, Shared Belief worked in company and had the fastest of nine works at the distance.