SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – An outside post going a mile on Saratoga’s inner turf course may not be desirable for most trainers, but when I Bet Toni Knows was assigned post 10 for Thursday’s Statue of Liberty Division of the New York Stallion Stakes at Saratoga, trainer Eric Reed was quite pleased.

Reed said that I Bet Toni Knows is “funny when she’s inside of horses.”

She shouldn’t have to worry about being inside of horses in this one-mile stakes restricted to progeny of New York-based stallions.

DEL MAR, Calif. – The highest-grossing films of the year have been “Marvel’s The Avengers,” “The Hunger Games,” and “The Dark Knight Rises,” but for horseplayers eyeballing Del Mar on Thursday, they might want to take a look at a replay of the second race from opening day, July 18, because it could yield a little blockbuster.

Here is yet another example of why it’s good to have a strong bench.

Trainer Rick Violette was planning to work his impressive debut winner Carried Interest on Tuesday in preparation for a start in Sunday’s Grade 2, $200,000 Saratoga Special. But when Violette arrived at his barn, he noticed Carried Interest had a tender shin. While Violette wouldn’t definitively declare Carried Interest out of the Special, he did work his other impressive 2-year-old debut winner Spurious Precision, who now may run in Sunday’s 6 1/2-furlong race.

Two jockeys riding for the first time at Saratoga this summer, Junior Alvarado and Irad Ortiz Jr., have proven to be pleasant surprises during the opening three weeks of the meet. Alvarado won three stakes last weekend, including the Prioress, and has ridden five stakes winners at the session. Ortiz is already a two-time Grade 1 winner with Questing in the Coaching Club Oaks and Poseidon’s Warrior on Sunday in the Vanderbilt.

Robby Albarado is scheduled to ride in Kentucky for the first time since he was arrested on the morning of the May 4 Kentucky Oaks, having been named aboard Sassy Image in the showcase event at the Ellis Park meet, the $100,000 Gardenia Stakes on Saturday.

According to an e-mail from Dick Brown, a spokesman for the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission, Albarado has been eligible to ride in Kentucky since late May, when he was awarded a temporary restraining order in Franklin Circuit Court.

DEL MAR, Calif. – August is not shaping up as the month that trainer Simon Callaghan had envisioned earlier this summer.

He hoped to travel to Arlington Park in a couple of weeks to start Belle Royale in the Grade 1 Beverly D. Stakes, intending to prove that she was not only the best turf filly in his stable, but the nation.

That won’t happen. Belle Royale, a Grade 1 winner in May, was retired with an injury last month. She was his hope for the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Turf.

Phil Gleaves first came to Saratoga in 1977 with Lucien Lauren and then continued his regular pilgrimages here working for Woody Stephens until relocating in south Florida on a permanent basis in 1999. Gleaves still tries to make it back to Saratoga to race whenever he can, and on Friday he’ll return once again with his top 3-year-old Csaba, who runs in the Grade 2 National Museum of Racing Hall of Fame Stakes.

DEL MAR, Calif. – Handle is up for the meeting at Del Mar, and ontrack attendance, though down slightly, continues to improve from week to week, according to figures released by the track following the conclusion of the first three weeks of racing on Sunday.

Average daily all-sources handle is at $11,712,260, up from last year’s $11,318,353 at this point in the meet. And ontrack, handle is up more than 10 percent compared to the first three weeks last year.

A likely reason for the increase in handle is that field size is up from last year, to 8.34 runners per race from 8.17.

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y – Lost in all the emotion of trainer Allen Jerkens’s first Grade 1 win in five years following Emma’s Encore’s victory in Saturday’s Prioress Stakes was the huge effort turned in by runner-up Judy the Beauty. Emma’s Encore ran down Judy the Beauty in the final strides of the Prioress to post a nose decision, frustrating Wesley Ward in another agonizingly close but futile attempt to win the first Grade 1 race of his training career.

Strong growth in its live and online racing operations propelled Churchill Downs Inc. to record revenues and profits for the second quarter of 2012, an indication that the company still relies on its bedrock business despite its turn toward casino gambling over the past several years.