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.

Russell Baze, who led the nation’s jockeys with 374 victories in 2012, won the first race of 2013 at Golden Gate aboard Picture Perfect on Tuesday. He wound up with three wins after capturing the sixth race with Cheese Danish and the eighth with Isadaisybelle.

But Baze isn’t the leading rider of 2013 at Golden Gate Fields.

Dennis Carr won four races Tuesday – the third, fourth, fifth, and ninth.

As for Baze, he had the highest winning percentage among the nation’s riders last year, at 33 percent, and he hit the board in 69 percent of his starts.

ARCADIA, Calif. - In late 2011, Lady of Shamrock was bought privately by owner Kosta Hronis and sent to trainer John Sadler. In the final days of 2011 and through 2012, Lady of Shamrock won five stakes for 2- and 3-year-old fillies, including two Grade 1 races – the American Oaks and Del Mar Oaks.

Hronis and Sadler are trying to do the same this year with Sky High Gal.

Purchased privately in the autumn, Sky High Gal won her California debut in Tuesday’s Blue Norther Stakes over a mile on turf. Lady of Shamrock won the same race at the end of 2011.