HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Breeders’ Cup Juvenile winner Shanghai Bobby took his first baby step back toward his 3-year-old debut when he worked an easy half-mile in 52 seconds at the Palm Meadows training center Monday. Shanghai Bobby is scheduled to launch his 2013 campaign in the Grade 3 Holy Bull here Jan. 26.

“It was just an easy first breeze back,” trainer Todd Pletcher said. “I was debating whether to go three-eighths or a half-mile and decided to go an easy half. He did well for a starting point, will come back and breeze again next Monday, and then pick it up from there.”

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. - Barclay Tagg trained Bit of Whimsy to become a Grade 1 winner in 2007, and now he’s hoping to be able to achieve similar results with her daughter Caroline Thomas, who won for the second time in three starts when she defeated first-level allowance competition on the turf here Sunday.

Bit of Whimsy won the Queen Elizabeth II Cup at Keeneland as a 3-year-old in 2007. She was also a Grade 2 and Grade 3 winner during a career that ended the following summer following a troubled ninth-place finish in the Grade 1 Diana.

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. - The stewards handed leading rider Joel Rosario a three-day suspension for his ride aboard Fog Happens in Friday’s 10th race. Fog Happens was disqualified from first and placed fourth for interfering with The Marikutana near midstretch in the maiden race on the grass.

Rosario’s agent, Ron Anderson, said his rider will serve his begin serving his days on Friday.

It’s a twisted situation a handicapper regularly encounters: Classy Zip might be the best horse in the featured eighth race Wednesday at Fair Grounds, yet she also looks like a bad bet.

The 4-year-old filly, trainer Hugh McMahon’s second starter of his first Fair Grounds meet, is admirably consistent: In 11 grass races she has finished worse than third only once. She nearly always hews to her baseline high-end allowance or low-end stakes form, a snug fit for the allowance conditions of the Wednesday feature, a 5 1/2-furlong turf race also open to $62,500 claimers.

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. - Donnie Richardson, a longtime racing executive who ended his association with Churchill Downs earlier this year, has returned to his roots as a jockey agent and is representing both Patrick Husbands and Jermaine Bridgmohan here this winter.

Endorsement is part of a 15-horse division trainer Eoin Harty has settled in at Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs, Ark., and he said the multiple graded stakes winner is training toward a start in the $75,000 Fifth Season on the opening-day card Jan. 11. The race will be Endorsement’s first since finishing sixth to eventual Breeders’ Cup Classic winner Fort Larned in the Grade 1 Whitney Invitational at Saratoga.

“The Oaklawn Handicap is a goal with him,” Harty said of meet plans for Endorsement, who in April won the Grade 3 Texas Mile at Lone Star Park.

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – El Padrino’s 3-year-old season started on a high note at Gulfstream Park, and trainer Todd Pletcher is hopeful it will end the same way when he brings his Grade 2 winner back from a 7 1/2-month hiatus against older horses in Wednesday’s $60,500 main event, to be decided under optional claiming conditions out of the one-mile chute.

The $35,000 City of Phoenix Stakes at Turf Paradise was rescheduled to Wednesday from Saturday, when the card at the Phoenix track was canceled after heavy rain. All six of those originally entered in the six-furlong race for fillies and mares were entered back for Wednesday, plus one more in the form of the speedy Gracias.

A case can be made for several in the field, but the race shape and her versatility may mean the race plays into the hands of Jaws n’ Paws.

OLDSMAR, Fla. – Chad Stewart has been active in the entry box and in the winner’s circle this meeting, having won 6 races from 13 starters in the first seven days of racing, and he’s also put on his share of miles between Oldsmar and Ocala. The Nebraska native has a farm in Ocala, where he trains and prepares his runners, so there is a good bit of coming and going between his training headquarters and Tampa Bay Downs.

INGLEWOOD, Calif. – The fall meeting at Betfair Hollywood Park ended Sunday with gains in all-sources handle and a significant spike from account-wagering sources, according to track president Jack Liebau.

The track released limited data Sunday, the end of the 24-day meeting.

Liebau said that all-sources handle, including ontrack, simulcasting, and account-wagering sources, would finish higher by “8 or 9 percent.”

“That’s a victory in itself,” he said.