MIAMI - Close It Out, who upset Bahamian Squall to capture the Jack Dudley Sprint Handicap here last fall, will top a field of 10 older sprinters in Saturday’s six-furlong Champali overnight stakes. Close It Out is winless in three starts since the Jack Dudley and has been freshened since finishing fourth in the Gulfstream Park Sprint Championship three months earlier.

Tread is a nose from bringing a perfect record into the $100,000 Miss Preakness on Friday at Pimlico. She has won two of her three career starts, and will be making her stakes debut in the six-furlong race for 3-year-old fillies that is part of the undercard on Black-Eyed Susan Day.

Though based in Maryland, Dance to Bristol makes her first appearance at Pimlico on Friday when she heads a field of seven fillies entered in the $100,000 Skipat Stakes at six furlongs.

Dance to Bristol, stabled at the Bowie training center with trainer Ollie Figgins III, has won her last three starts, including a nine-length romp in the $200,000 Sugar Maple Stakes at Charles Town on April 20. The big question is whether Dance to Bristol will bounce, or regress, off such a big performance.

BALTIMORE – The success in recent years of Ben’s Cat has focused renewed, deserved attention on the great career of trainer King Leatherbury, a Maryland legend who is still going strong long after the glory days here when he faced off regularly with Bud Delp, Dick Dutrow, and John Tammaro.

Ben’s Cat has earned more than $1.4 million, and has won 20 of 30 starts, with turf sprints his specialty. Ben’s Cat will try to add to those totals on Friday at Pimlico, when he heads the field in the $100,000 Jim McKay Turf Sprint over five furlongs.

How they leave the starting gate in Saturday’s feature race at Northlands Park will go a long way in determining the outcome of the six-furlong sprint for fillies and mares. Claresmiezie and Plethora have excellent speed, and if they hook up early in the $35,000 optional claimer it could set up nicely for Tempered Sapphire. If one gets away on her own, she could be tough to run down.

MIAMI – Trainer David Fawkes used Calder’s Ponche Handicap and Grade 2 Smile Sprint to launch Big Drama’s championship campaign in 2010. Three years later, Fawkes is considering taking a similar path with his current sprint sensation Bahamian Squall, a 4-year-old homebred owned by Donald Dizney.

BALTIMORE - There were no surprises at entry time at Pimlico on Wednesday, when nine were entered in Saturday's 138th Preakness Stakes, in which Kentucky Derby winner Orb will try to keep his Triple Crown hopes alive.

In addition to Orb, others in the Preakness are Departing, Goldencents, Govenor Charlie, Itsmyluckyday, Mylute, Oxbow, Titletown Five, and Will Take Charge.

The draw for the 1 3/16-mile race is scheduled for 6 p.m., and will be shown live on HRTV.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Churchill Downs is billing it as “the city’s best happy hour,” which may or may not be false advertising. Still, no other venue in town offers three allowances among 11 races on any given Friday after 4 p.m., a fact that gives this track a big edge with Louisville’s sizable horseplayer population, if not the public at large.

After spending the last 25 years as a jockey agent, Ron Ebanks said Joel Rosario was going to be his last client.

“Whether it was him or I who walked away, he was going to be my last rider,” Ebanks said.

The split came abruptly last August at Saratoga, about six weeks after Ebanks brought Rosario to the East Coast from Southern California. While Rosario basks in the glow of victories in this year’s Kentucky Derby and Dubai World Cup, Ebanks is no longer in racing, having started two new business ventures.

Joel Rosario had returned to the jockeys’ room at Pimlico after riding one of the undercard races on Preakness Day last May and noticed he had several missed calls from his brother Danny.

Without listening to any of the messages, Joel called his older brother, who picked up the phone, crying.

Danny Rosario stopped crying long enough to tell Joel that their older brother Marino had been killed in a motorcycle accident. Marino, a police officer in the Dominican Republic and one of 12 of Rosario’s siblings, had been struck by a truck on his way to work.