GRAND PRAIRIE, Texas – Lone Star Park trainer Dallas Keen has branched out with his stable, sending 13 horses to Gulfstream Park. He shipped into the Florida track about two weeks ago and had a second- and third-place finish Friday from his first two starters there. Keen also will continue to operate at Lone Star, where he has 16 horses, including five new prospects from North America’s leading stable this year in wins, Midwest Thoroughbreds.

BALTIMORE – Regarding jockey Julian Pimentel’s first Triple Crown mount, the memories are all about the experience, not the result.

Pimentel rode Norman Asbjornson in the 2011 Preakness for Maryland trainer Christopher Grove. The colt, off a fourth-place finish in the Wood Memorial, was a 42-1 shot and ran like it, stalking the pace for half the race before fading to 11th.

BALTIMORE – If Wesley Ward has been typecast as a master with 2-year-old Thoroughbreds, well, so be it.

“Over the years, clients started upgrading their pedigrees, and I’ve gotten to train some really nice babies,” Ward said. “Eventually, the horses get older, you know. That’s allowed me to build a pretty nice stable.”

One of those flashy 2-year-olds has matured into a 3-year-old worthy of running in the Triple Crown series: Pablo Del Monte, bred and owned by Ward in partnership with the powerful Coolmore group, will start Saturday in the 139th Preakness Stakes at Pimlico.

It was business as usual with no surprises in Golden Gate Fields’s weekend stakes.

Luscious Lonna repeated Saturday in the $59,450 Golden Poppy Stakes. She went off as the even-money favorite when morning-line favorite Halo Dolly scratched.

The odds-on G. G. Ryder, sitting nicely behind Latitudefortytwo, took command in the stretch Sunday to win the $75,000 Alcatraz Stakes.

When the New York Racing Association announced major increases to its stakes purses this year, longtime Pimlico racing secretary Georgeanne Hale felt she had to do something to compete.

So, Pimlico has come up with a $100,000 bonus system that is enticing trainers to enter more horses than they might have otherwise in the 15 stakes to be run here Friday and Saturday.

“We felt we had to come up with a way to get bigger fields for fans to bet on Preakness Weekend,” said Hale, the racing secretary here since 2000.

BALTIMORE - Kentucky Derby winner California Chrome, escorted by four Baltimore city police officers on motorcycles, arrived at Pimlico Racecourse a little before 3:15 p.m. Monday after shipping from Churchill Downs.

Multiple-Grade 1 winners Princess of Sylmar and Close Hatches both put in workouts Monday morning – virtually at the same time – over two different tracks in preparation for the $1 million Ogden Phipps Handicap, which runs June 7.

At around 9:40 a.m. on the training track, Princess of Sylmar worked five furlongs in 1:00.57 in company with Misconnect, a 3-year-old male. They galloped out six furlongs in 1:14.25 and seven furlongs in 1:28.25.

At approximately the same time on the main track, Close Hatches went a half-mile in 48.45 seconds.

ELMONT, N.Y. – The frustrations trainer Todd Pletcher experienced with Palace Malice in the spring of 2013 are a distant memory now as the horse has developed into a professional runner who just may be the best older male in training.

While Imagining sped off to a frontrunning victory in Sunday’s Grade 1 Man o’ War Stakes, Amira’s Prince, the 8-5 favorite, finished last in the field of six.

It was the first time in six U.S. starts that Amira’s Prince finished worse than third. On Monday, trainer Bill Mott said he still could not offer a plausible excuse for the performance.

“I have no excuses,” Mott said. “We’ll continue to check him out and look for some reason, but I haven’t seen a reason for that performance. I don’t understand it.”

Eleven years after running Dynever in the Belmont Stakes against Empire Maker and Funny Cide, trainer Christophe Clement gets another crack at the third leg of the Triple Crown with Tonalist, convincing winner of Saturday’s Grade 2 Peter Pan Stakes.

Dynever entered the Belmont off a win in the Lone Star Derby and was training well, Clement said, leading into the Belmont. However, Dynever did not handle the sloppy track and finished fourth behind Empire Maker.