Whatever gets you there . . .

Kelly Breen and his clients, George and Lori Hall, are thinking outside the box when it comes to possibly making the Kentucky Derby with one of their better 3-year-olds, a dark bay colt named Bye Bye Bernie. They may be taking the Turfway Park route.

“He’s shown he likes Polytrack, so if he runs well Saturday, he’ll stay there another four weeks and we’ll just play it race-by-race from there,” Breen said this week while en route to New York from his main winter base in south Florida. “Turfway has a nice progression of races through the winter.”

STICKNEY, Ill. – All-sources average daily handle at Hawthorne Race Course declined 7 percent from 2011 during a fall-winter meet that ended Dec. 30, but things could have been worse. This Hawthorne season will long be remembered for the equine herpesvirus outbreak that began infecting horses in mid-October and led to talk of halting the race meet in midseason.

Average daily handle on race cards in 2012 at Penn National Race Course jumped 20.6 percent compared to the same figure during 2011, according to figures released by the track Thursday.

Track officials cited a change in schedule, a slight increase in average field size, and an effort to schedule post times to avoid conflicts with other tracks for the jump. In 2012, Penn National raced on a Wednesday-through-Saturday schedule for most of the year, compared to a schedule in 2011 of running on Mondays, Tuesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays.

New Orleans is a nice place to spend the winter with a Louisiana-bred stakes-level turf horse: This is just Week 6 of the Fair Grounds race meet, and Saturday’s feature, the $60,000 Dixie Poker Ace, already is the third turf stakes offered for older Louisiana-breds.

Between them, trainers Doug O’Neill and Bob Baffert have won three of the last four runnings of the Santa Anita Derby, and their drive to this year’s race on April 6 begins in earnest Saturday, when both send out a pair of runners in the Grade 3, $100,000 Sham Stakes, the first graded stakes of the Santa Anita meet for Kentucky Derby prospects.

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – The high point of Heavenly Landing’s 2012 campaign came early, when she rallied from the rear of the pack to capture the Grade 3 Marshua’s River just one week into the new year.

Trainer Eddie Kenneally is hoping the Marshua’s River will be the first of many high points for Heavenly Landing in 2013, when she returns to defend her title against nine rivals on Saturday at Gulfstream Park.

The name Katey Barrett has long been synonymous with two things: excellence in equine photography and historic Santa Anita Park, particularly the track’s unique downhill turf course. Generations of West Coast racing fans have come to appreciate her quirky, astonishingly creative one-of-a-kind style . . . a masterful artistry, fusing light, color, motion, and imagination.

ARCADIA, Calif. - Santa Anita racing officials were informed Thursday by the American Graded Stakes Committee that the Daytona Stakes run Dec. 29 will retain Grade 3 status, despite being switched from grass to dirt. Turf stakes moved to the main track are automatically downgraded one level, but also subject to re-evaluation.

Apprentice jockey Wilmer Garcia will be out indefinitely due to a hairline fracture in his neck sustained in a car accident on Wednesday, according to his agent Jose Henriquez.

Garcia, based in New York, was driving to Penn National on Wednesday where on Thursday night he was scheduled to ride Wiseman’s Jet, a 12-1 morning-line choice in a $7,500 claiming race for owner/trainer Osvaldo Rojas. Thursday was a dark day at Aqueduct.

Trainer Ralph Arnold Jr., who experienced his best year in racing in 2012, died Dec. 31 of a possible aneurysm, according to friends. He was 62.

Arnold was a native of San Antonio whose first win as a trainer came at Bandera Downs on May 26, 1991. He was perennially among the leading owners and trainers at his home track of Retama Park. Arnold also raced at Sam Houston in Houston and at Lone Star Park near Dallas, where in July he sent out Early M to win the $50,000 Valor Farm in her first start since being claimed for $8,000. She paid $53.60.