ELMONT, N.Y. – “Absolutely ecstatic.”

That’s how trainer D. Wayne Lukas said he was feeling Wednesday after Strong Mandate visited Belmont’s main track for the first time in preparation for Saturday’s Grade 1, $500,000 Champagne Stakes.

Strong Mandate, the 9 3/4-length winner of the Grade 1 Hopeful at Saratoga on Sept. 2, arrived at Belmont from Churchill on Tuesday. On Wednesday, he drew post 7 in a field of nine entered for the Champagne, a one-turn, one-mile race that offers a fees-paid berth to the $2 million Breeders’ Cup Juvenile at Santa Anita on Nov. 2.

STICKNEY, Ill. – If everything really is relative, Hawthorne Race Course, barring the absolutely catastrophic, is in for at least a decent fall-winter race meet compared to last year.

Not long after it began, Hawthorne’s 2012 fall-winter season was overrun by a serious outbreak of the equine herpesvirus, known as EHV-1. The meet continued with the track under quarantine as the virus ran its course. Seven horses died, the meeting left in tatters.

LEXINGTON, Ky. – The premise of FallStars Weekend at Keeneland is self-evident, although some years are better than others. And with Wise Dan heading the roster of FallStars entrants as Keeneland opens its 17-day fall meet Friday, let there be no doubt that this is a banner year.

Wise Dan will bring his 2012 Horse of the Year title and a nine-race winning streak from his Rice Road stable Saturday as a heavy favorite to repeat in the $750,000 Shadwell Turf Mile, one of five Grade 1 races during the three-day FallStars schedule.

Retama Park near San Antonio will open its 26-date meet Friday night with a later post time, a new general manager, and a possible Breeders’ Cup rooting interest in Got Shades. The track also has made a strategic change to its stakes schedule, drawn notable new stables, and is to race on turf from its opening after being unable to do so for the first three weeks of the meet a year ago.

LEXINGTON, Ky. – Ken Ramsey wanted to know: What’s the record for the most wins by an owner at a fall meet at Keeneland?

“Whatever it is, we’re going to try to break it,” Ramsey said Wednesday from his Nicholasville, Ky., farm.

LEXINGTON, Ky. – Wise Dan has been assigned the outside post in a field of 10 older horses entered in the Grade 1, $750,000 Shadwell Turf Mile, the richest race of the Keeneland fall meet and one of five graded stakes on a sensational Saturday program.

Wise Dan, the reigning Horse of the Year, will have John Velazquez aboard in the Shadwell, a two-turn race he won last year as a 3-5 favorite. The 6-year-old gelding has won his last nine races and surely will be a huge favorite again as he makes his final start before the Nov. 2 Breeders’ Cup Mile at Santa Anita.

ARCADIA, Calif. – No Jet Lag faces the toughest turf milers in California in Saturday’s $150,000 City of Hope Mile at Santa Anita. It is not the racing program that trainer Simon Callaghan envisioned after No Jet Lag won his American debut in an optional claimer at a mile on turf at Del Mar on Aug. 11.

That race was intended to be a prep for the Grade 2 Del Mar Derby on Sept. 1, but No Jet Lag could not get a berth in the stakes even after the race was divided. A 3-year-old Kentucky-bred gelding, No Jet Lag began his career in England, where he won two minor races in 2012.

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Jockey Andre Worrie showed up at work on Sunday still looking for his first career victory. A couple of hours later, Worrie had not one but two winners on his r é sum é after registering an unusual riding double comprising victories at two different tracks within little more than an hour.

ETOBICOKE, Ontario – Mark Frostad won two runnings of the Mazarine Stakes during his term as trainer for Sam-Son Farm, with Silken Cat scoring by 3 1/4 lengths in 1995 and Hello Seattle romping by 14 in 1999. But whereas Silken Cat and Hello Seattle were odds-on favorites coming off impressive wins, Frostad’s candidate for this year’s Mazarine will be looking for her first victory.

Game On Dude, who bypassed the Awesome Again Stakes on Saturday to train straight into the Breeders’ Cup Classic, picked up the pace of his training on Tuesday morning at Santa Anita with a six-furlong drill in 1:12. It was his third drill since his victory in the Pacific Classic at Del Mar. His previous two drills were at a half-mile.