ELMONT, N.Y. – The gray skies above and the road-construction crews outside the front gates on Hempstead Turnpike on Thursday morning perhaps provided the appropriate backdrop as Belmont Park prepares to commence its fall meeting on Saturday.

An advertisement for Kentucky Downs shows a bar graph comparing purses from last September with what is expected to be paid out when a six-day meet commences Saturday. The bar representing 2011 is a stub: $750,000. The one for 2012 is a tower: $2.4 million.

Cardinal Zin is stepping up in class off a loss, but he still looks like a major player in a $15,000 claiming race for 3-year-olds and up at Northlands Park on Saturday. The 6 1/2-furlong sprint drew seven well-matched horses and goes as the seventh race.

Cardinal Zin, trained by Tom Rycroft, won his two previous races before losing by a neck to Lyons Growl in a $10,000 claiming race going six furlongs Aug. 25. With any kind of a trip, he would be coming into Saturday’s race looking for his fourth straight win.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia – When Glen Todd decided to get serious about horse racing six years ago, he had a couple of major goals: winning the Grade 3 Longacres Mile and the Grade 3 British Columbia Derby.

OPELOUSAS, La. – There is something for everybody on the season’s final evening of racing Saturday night at Evangeline Downs.

The entire class spectrum will be represented, from $3,500 conditioned claimers all the way up to the stakes ranks. Distances will range from a rare 2 1/2 furlongs on the main track to a mile and a half on turf. Even Quarter Horses will get into the act as a pair of Fair Grounds stakes that were lost due to Hurricane Isaac have been moved 100 miles to the west. The 11-race program gets under way at 5:40 p.m. Central.

The timing of Tia Murphy getting her first job as a racing secretary comes as a happy coincidence. Murphy, a 34-year-old resident of northern Kentucky, was appointed to that post several months ago at Kentucky Downs, where enthusiasm for the six-day meet at the south-central Kentucky track is at an unprecedented level because of the huge purses.

“Everybody is geared up,” said Murphy, a racing official on the Kentucky circuit since 2001. “The fields are going to be so big that the biggest concern from horsemen is that they won’t get to run.”

ETOBICOKE, Ontario – Trainer Bob Tiller entered four fillies in Saturday’s $125,000 La Prevoyante Stakes. Among them, Grace Phil should be favored in the one-mile turf route for Ontario-sired 3-year-old fillies at Woodbine.

Grace Phil has run hot and cold this year. She won her season opener in allowance company, but then flopped as the favorite in the May 20 Lady Angela Stakes. She rebounded in her first turf start July 21, when she took the seven-furlong Passing Mood Stakes under a textbook ride from Steve Bahen.

El Commodore, narrowly beaten in a pair of Grade 3 stakes this season, will look to gain his elusive first stakes victory in Saturday’s $125,000 Japan Racing Association at Laurel Park.

The 1 1/16-mile Japan Racing Association is one of four races scheduled for turf on an 11-race card and attracted a field of 11 older horses.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia – An honest pace could help Stormy Bob when he runs in a $15,000 claiming race for 3-year-olds at Hastings Saturday. The 1 1/16-mile race drew nine horses and appears to be a wide-open event.

Post time for the first of nine races is 1:50 p.m. Pacific. Hastings will be giving away Mario Gutierrez bobblehead dolls to the first 1,000 people that purchase a program. Gutierrez, who achieved fame when he won the Kentucky Derby and Preakness aboard I’ll Have Another, rides three horses on the card.

A small but distinguished cast of older horses will race 1 3/16 miles in Saturday’s $50,000 Carl Hanford Memorial Stakes at Delaware Park.

Just five runners are entered, but the group includes Win Willy, winner of the Grade 2 Oaklawn Handicap in 2011; Eldaafer, champion of the 2010 Breeders’ Cup Marathon; and Not Abroad, the runner-up by a half-length in the Grade 3 Greenwood Cup, a Win and You’re In event for this fall’s BC Marathon.