ETOBICOKE, Ontario – Favored Spring Venture won the $262,900 Natalma Stakes comfortably at Woodbine on Saturday over another Mark Casse-trained 2-year-old filly, Spring in the Air.

Spring Venture was rank early while racing three wide at the rear of the first flight in the one-mile turf event. Shenandoah Lady and Coconut Shrimp dueled up front over the yielding ground until about the eighth pole, where Spring Venture found room before kicking away to a 1 3/4-length score, in 1:37.27.

Plus One, one of five 3-year-old fillies separated by two noses and two necks at the wire, barely hung on to win Friday night’s $50,000 Alison McClay Stakes at Penn National.

Making her turf debut in the five-furlong sprint, Plus One ($11.40) set a pressured pace and was all out under William Otero to hold off 8-5 favorite Thisdanseistaken by a nose. The winning time over firm turf was 56.24 seconds.

At first glance, it hardly seems possible that multiple stakes winner Fugitive Angel would be eligible to run in Monday’s featured seventh race at Delaware Park, a third-level optional $75,000 claimer scheduled for 7 1/2 furlongs on turf.

After all, the 5-year-old Fugitive Angel has six lifetime victories – five of them in stakes – including the Grade 3 Valley View at Keeneland in October 2010. Trainer Jonathan Sheppard certainly isn’t going to risk losing Fugitive Angel, whose bankroll is $353,072, by running her for a $75,000 tag.

Tuesday’s card at Fairmount Park feels like the Breeders’ Cup of southern Illinois, with six $50,000 Illinois-bred stakes races at a track that typically hands out four-figure purses to low-level claimers.

The best of the sextet might well be the last stakes of the day, the Pete Condellone Memorial, for older horses at one mile and 70 yards. Eight horses were entered, and the top contenders – no surprise – are shipping down from Chicago. The Fairmount morning line lists Hope for Today as an 8-5 favorite, but he figures to be close to the same price as Color Me Blue.

Julien Leparoux, who has won or tied for leading rider at 8 of the last 13 meets at Keeneland, has reversed a prior stance and will be returning from New York after all to ride throughout the 17-day fall meet at the Lexington, Ky., track.

Fort Erie will provide the stage, but the leading players will be shipping down from Woodbine for a pair of $50,000 stakes races Tuesday.

Say No More, an impressive winner of his first start on Fort Erie’s dirt surface, returns for the George Frostad Memorial, a five-furlong race for 3-year-olds and up that attracted a field of five.

Anywhere, who vanned down to finish second in the July 1 Rainbow Connection over five furlongs on Fort Erie’s turf course, heads a field of seven fillies and mares in the Ernie Samuel Memorial, also at five furlongs.

ELMONT, N.Y. – The $1 million Jockey Club Gold Cup is still two weeks away, but several key players – including last year’s winner Flat Out – put in workouts for the 1  1/4-mile race Saturday.

Flat Out, who won last year’s Gold Cup by 2 1/4 lengths over Drosselmeyer – the subsequent Breeders’ Cup Classic winner – worked five furlongs in 59.89 seconds over Saratoga’s Oklahoma training track. Saratoga clockers timed Flat Out’s last quarter in 23.09 while catching him galloping out six furlongs in 1:13.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Groupie Doll most likely will have two easy workouts at her Churchill Downs base prior to making her final start before the Breeders’ Cup in the Oct. 6 Thoroughbred Club of America Stakes at Keeneland, trainer Buff Bradley said Saturday morning.

“I haven’t mapped it out exactly, but that’d probably be what we’d want, a couple of easy half-miles the next two weekends,” Bradley said.

FRANKLIN, Ky. – After running fifth in both the Southwest and Rebel Stakes last winter at Oaklawn Park, Cyber Secret got time off to regroup and reload.

“He was showing me a little bit of wear, so I stopped on him down there after the Rebel,” trainer Lynn Whiting said. “We weren’t going to make the [Kentucky] Derby, and we wanted to have the right horse in the fall. He’s a fresh horse with some talent, and that’s a position you want to be in.”

Diamond Joe won his ninth straight race - and first outside of Nebraska - on Friday night at Remington Park and is now being pointed for the $400,000 Oklahoma Derby. The horse will be seeking his 10^th consecutive win when he starts in the mile and an eighth stakes  to be run Sept. 30.