HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Groupie Doll, an almost unanimous choice as female sprint champion in 2012, will return to Buff Bradley’s farm in Kentucky for some additional rest after not training to her trainer’s satisfaction since her arrival at Gulfstream Park just before the start of the New Year.

Sisterly Love, who is undefeated in three career starts, will be making her stakes debut in Saturday night’s $400,000 Houston Ladies Classic after supplementing to the race’s inaugural running for $10,000 when entries were taken Wednesday. In all, a field of six fillies and mares will go in what will be the richest race ever run at Sam Houston Race Park, which opened in 1994.

HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – Always in a Tiz, who came charging for third in Monday’s $150,000 Smarty Jones at Oaklawn, was back at his Gulfstream Park base Wednesday with plans for his next start to be determined, said his trainer, Dominick Schettino.

Always in a Tiz was the favorite in Monday’s Smarty Jones off a second-place finish to eventual Grade 2 Jerome winner Vyjack in an Aqueduct overnight stakes Dec.  9. He rallied for third, beaten a neck by winner Will Take Charge, in his Oaklawn debut. Always in a Tiz earned a career-high Beyer Speed Figure of 85.

Officials at Turfway Park will add four days of racing next month, thereby eliminating the two dark weekends that were originally scheduled for the northern Kentucky track.

Feb. 15-16 and 22-23 were supposed to be dark, but Turfway reserved them as provisional dates in its formal request last fall to the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission. “We’ve decided to go on and use them,” general manager Chip Bach said Wednesday.

ARCADIA, Calif. – Since the summer of 2011, Ismene has impressed trainer Bill Spawr with nearly all her actions, particularly her workouts and her unbeaten three-race campaign that year.

“I couldn’t believe when we got her at Del Mar,” he said, recalling that season. “I thought something was wrong with my watch.”

Spawr’s watch was fine. Ismene was plain fast, a point proven with two stakes wins in 2011. She missed 2012 because of a knee injury and hind end soreness and makes her 4-year-old debut in an optional claimer over six furlongs at Santa Anita on Friday.

Coinciding with the unofficial “reopening” of the Fair Grounds turf course this week, the New Orleans track will feature three turf races among its four stakes on a terrific 12-race Saturday card.

Two of those grass races – the Marie Krantz Memorial and the Col. E.R. Bradley Handicap – are rescheduled events after being postponed last Saturday, when wet conditions rendered the course unusable. In fact, until this week, only one race had been run over the turf course since Jan. 1.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Aqueduct’s Friday card is Exhibit A why the New York Racing Association Reorganization Board at its meeting the same day should do more than just consider reducing this track’s winter schedule.

Only 60 horses were entered for the nine races, and there will be at least one scratch from three races due to the same jockey being named on both halves of an entry. Four races have only five betting interests, and only two races have as many as eight betting interests.

Jockey Russell Baze is approaching another milestone that he can reach Friday at Golden Gate Fields.

Baze, who picked up three wins Monday to increase his career total to 11,836, is just six mounts away from riding in his 50,000th Thoroughbred race. He will be the first U.S.-based rider to reach that mark.

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. –After looking for weeks for an ideal spot for Escrow Kid and not really finding anything to his exact liking, trainer Rudy Rodriguez entered him in Friday’s featured seventh race at Gulfstream Park, an optional claimer in which he will be taking on some accomplished turf sprinters, like Awakino Cat.

That is, of course, unless it rains.

“I’m hoping for rain,” Rodriguez said. “That would be nice.”

Jockey Ramon Dominguez, who suffered a slightly displaced skull fracture in a spill last Friday at Aqueduct, was moved on Tuesday from Jamaica Medical Center Hospital in Queens, N.Y., to New York Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center in Manhattan, according to his wife, Sharon.

"Ramon is doing really well and resting comfortably," Sharon Dominguez said in a press release issued through the New York Racing Association.