LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Commanding Curve on Friday recorded his first breeze since his runner-up finish in the Kentucky Derby, working a half-mile in 48 4/5 seconds over a “good” track at Churchill Downs as he prepares for the June 7 Belmont Stakes.

He breezed in company with the runner-up from the 2013 Derby, stablemate Golden Soul. The two were given identical times by track clockers.

“It was just easy – he showed good energy,” trainer Dallas Stewart said of Commanding Curve. “We’re focusing on the Belmont. He’ll have another work next week.”

 May 16 preview

 It is still warm in Southern California, although not triple-digit hot. Santa Anita canceled racing Thursday due to extreme heat. Temperatures are expected to drop Friday into the 90s. Twilight racing resumes Friday at Santa Anita, with first post at 3 p.m. Pacific.

 It was a dry winter, and the fast turf course this spring has been a topic of discussion among track officials. Concerns include the speed-friendly profile, and final times that have been excessively fast.

BALTIMORE – Predicting the pace of the Kentucky Derby this year was an exercise in uncertainty. Some forecasters got the slow pace right, but many thought the fractions laid down by the early leaders would be several lengths faster. In the end, a lack of surefire, need-the-lead-type horses combined with instances of bad luck and passive tactics to produce the second-slowest Derby half-mile split, 47.37 seconds, in 16 years.

At the annual Alibi Breakfast on Thursday, retired jockey Ramon Dominguez was honored with the Special Award of Merit, given by the Maryland Jockey Club to someone who has made a positive impact on racing.

Dominguez won 4,985 races in his career, was a three-time Eclipse Award winner as the nation’s top jockey, and was a leading rider on the Maryland and New York circuits. Dominguez was forced to retire last year due to head trauma suffered in a spill at Aqueduct in January 2013.

DEL MAR, Calif. – The $1 million TVG Pacific Classic Stakes on Aug. 24 is the summer highlight at Del Mar, where more than $8 million in stakes purses will be offered during its first meet of 2014.

The 36-day summer meet runs from Thursday, July 17, through Sept. 3. In addition, Del Mar will host a 15-day fall meet Nov. 7-30. The fall meet will be the last with a synthetic racing surface. Del Mar will replace the surface with and a dirt track for 2015.

BALTIMORE – Jockey Alberto Delgado has a photo on his cellphone that starkly illustrates the excruciating difference between what might have been and what is.

The photo shows Delgado aboard California Chrome in the Santa Anita starting gate the Friday of Breeders’ Cup weekend in 2013. The colt is nearly upright while jumping at the break, conceding valuable ground to his opposition in the Golden State Juvenile. California Chrome was never a factor thereafter, finishing sixth.

ELMONT, N.Y. – Linda Rice’s purpose for being in Maryland this week is two-fold. The first, naturally, is to run Kid Cruz in Saturday’s Preakness Stakes at Pimlico. The second is to work the sales grounds at nearby Timonium in search of the next big horse.

Rice, 50, has spent a good portion of her adult life at horse auctions, more often than not watching others buy the horses she wanted but could not afford. Over the last few years, Rice has come up with a Plan B: the claim box.

ETOBICOKE, Ontario – Go Greeley, last year’s Canadian champion 2-year-old, seems cranked up for his second start of the season Saturday at Woodbine in the $150,000 Queenston Stakes, a seven-furlong test for Canadian-bred 3-year-olds.

Go Greeley wintered at the Payson Park Training Center in Florida before returning here for the six-furlong Woodstock Stakes, finishing a distant third after tracking a hot pace.

BALTIMORE – Up With the Birds, the 2013 Canadian Horse of the Year, is among 10 older horses in a competitive renewal of the Grade 2, $400,000 Dixie Stakes, the lead-in to the Preakness on a 13-race Saturday program at Pimlico.

Trained by Malcolm Pierce, Up With the Birds will be trying to rebound off a subpar effort last month at Keeneland in his only start so far this year. The 4-year-old colt will be ridden by Joel Rosario when breaking from post 8 in the 113th running of the Dixie.

EAST BOSTON, Mass. – Suffolk Downs, which had planned to add Tuesdays to its live-racing calendar beginning next week, has scratched the cards for May 20 and May 27 due to a shortage of horses.

“Right now, the horse population is not adequate to go to a four-day schedule. We’re going to have to take this on a week-by-week basis,” said Chip Tuttle, the track’s chief operating officer.