OCEANPORT. N.J. – Monmouth Park is gearing up for Haskell Day on July 29, the biggest day of the meet, and the fields for the seven stakes are taking shape.

The $1 million Haskell Invitational for 3-year-olds is the main event, and the current headliners are Paynter, hard-luck loser in the Belmont Stakes, and Blue Grass winner Dullahan.

Stakes coordinator Dan Dufford also expects Le Bernardin, winner of the Grade 3 Pegasus earlier this meet, and either Ohio Derby and Tampa Bay Derby winner Prospective or Stealcase from trainer Mark Casse.

Locksley Hall and Juan Might look like the main players in a $15,000 claiming race for 3-year-olds and up that will serve as Sunday’s feature at Northlands Park. The 6 1/2-furlong sprint drew seven horses and goes as the seventh race.

Terrific Synergy stood quiet and focused in the starting gate before a division of the Governor’s Cup Derby trials at Los Alamitos on July 14. For a change, he was behaving himself.

There was no fidgety behavior, even when a rival needed time to settle.

The result was evident. After a relatively clean start, Terrific Synergy delivered a brilliant performance. The gelding won the 400-yard trial by the widest margin of his career, 2 1/4 lengths, to set the fastest qualifying time of 19.58 seconds. He is expected to start favored in the $250,000-projected final on July 28.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia – The connections of Cry Cry Cry had every reason to shed tears after she was much the best but had her number taken down for causing interference out of the gate in a $25,000 claiming sprint for fillies and mares July 1. She’ll try to make amends when she stretches out to a mile and a sixteenth in Sunday’s feature at Hastings. The $25,000 claiming race for fillies and mares drew seven horses and Cry Cry Cry is the horse they will have to catch and beat.

FORT ERIE, Ontario – One of the most dangerous places in horse racing is the starting gate, where high-spirited horses are ready to spring when the bell rings. Just after entering the gate for the final race Tuesday, jockey Daniel David’s horse reared, and crushed his leg against the stall.

ETOBICOKE, Ontario — The New York shipper Imagining will meet two sharp local runners, Riding the River and Pender Harbour, over 1 1/8 miles on the turf Sunday in the $300,000 Nijinsky Stakes at Woodbine.

Imagining is a rare Woodbine starter for trainer Shug McGaughey, who has a host of good older grass runners. He has found a way to keep them apart by sending Imagining north of the border for the Grade 2 Nijinsky, in which he should be favored under Eddie Castro.

OCEANPORT, N.J. – Inspired will be the one catch in the $60,000 Klassy Briefcase Stakes on Sunday at Monmouth Park – if she runs.

Trainer Allen Iwinski is carefully weighing his options for the 5-year-old following her win in the Fort Monmouth Stakes last month. Inspired could turn up next weekend in the $100,000 Jennie Wade Stakes, a race she won by a neck over Bounding Bi last year. Or it could be a return engagement at Monmouth in the Klassy Briefcase for fillies and mares at 5 1/2 furlongs on the turf.

OMAHA, Neb. – A pair of past winners of the Omaha Stakes and a host of new ship-ins will close out the summer festival of racing at Horsemen’s Park on Sunday when a cast of eight older horses will go one mile in the $30,000 Omaha.

The closing-day feature is slotted as the last of six races on Sunday and features the 2009 and 2010 winners of this race, Orientate Express and Tenth Power.

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. – One morning earlier this summer trainer Mike Stidham pulled a proud papa act. But the mobile-phone photograph he showed off – beaming almost giddily – to a visitor wasn’t of one of his children. It was Willcox Inn pictured on the display, bay coat radiant, frame bursting with muscle.

Spice Swirl returns to defend her title against her younger sister as a field of five older Nebraska-bred fillies and mares go one mile in the $27,500 Falls Amiss Handicap at Horsemen’s Park.

Spice Swirl and Sookie’s Kookies are homebred half-sisters out of the Miracle Heights mare Shesaidsheknowsya, and they are owned by Roger and Barb Luebbe’s Shady Bend Thoroughbreds. The pair will go uncoupled in the wagering for trainer Brian Roberts as a trend of short statebred fields continues through the oppressive heat of this summer in Nebraska.