AUBURN, Wash. -- On Father’s Day at Emerald Downs, the Northwest’s Big Daddy, Noosa Beach, will try to get back on the winning beam in the day’s showcase event, the $50,000 Budweiser Handicap. First post is 2 p.m. Pacific, and the Budweiser is the eighth race on a 10-race program.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia – Trainer Pete Gregory should know a good horse when he sees one. After all, he trained Bolulight who won the 1992 British Columbia Derby by 12 lengths and went on to become a very good 4-year-old, winning the Grade 3 Longacres Mile. In total, he won 14 races and earned $906,347.

Gregory is pretty high on High End Man who will be running in a 1 1/16-mile, first-level allowance race for 3-year-olds at Hastings on Sunday.

SHAKOPEE, Minn. – Sunday’s card at Canterbury Park features the first two stakes affected by the purse enhancement marketing agreement between the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community and the racetrack. Originally scheduled for $35,000, both the Brooks Fields Stakes and the Shot of Gold Stakes are now worth $50,000 each.

The Shot of Gold will be contested at six furlongs over the main track and features a couple of horses who met in the Honor the Hero Express.

OCEANPORT, N.J. – Tim Hills has been a fixture at Monmouth Park since the mid 1990s, winning training titles here in 2002 and 2004. In that time, Hills has never had a runner in the meet’s premier event, the Grade 1, $1 million Haskell Invitational for 3-year-olds.

That could change this season, thanks to Good Morning Diva.

The Monmouth road to the Haskell starts Sunday with the Grade 3, $100,000 Pegasus Stakes. The Pegasus, long a mainstay at the Meadowlands Racetrack, and Long Branch on July 8 are the local preps leading to the Haskell on July 29.

[bc_video_id:254730:]INGLEWOOD, Calif. – The Breeders’ Cup was not rescheduled from fall to summer, nor was it relocated from Santa Anita to Betfair Hollywood Park.

And just to clarify, the purse of the BC Filly and Mare Sprint was not sliced from $1 million to $70,000 even if a championship-caliber field entered Sunday at Hollywood Park hints otherwise.

FORT ERIE, Ontario – Trainer Shawn Rideout, 38, had his first contact with horses in the early 90’s when as a teenager he quickly discovered that an indoor 8-to-5 job was not for him. His brother worked at Woodbine and Rideout quickly took up an offer to walk hots for trainer Sam Di Pasquale.

Progressing over the years to groom, gallop boy, and then trainer, Rideout gained his trainer’s license in 1998.

“It gets in your blood,” said Rideout, “and I and my partner in life, Jennifer (Hallett), look forward to arriving at the barn every day.

ETOBICOKE, Ontario – Heading into this week, trainer Josie Carroll was considering any or all of Beeker Street, Canadian Navy, and Wilcox for the June 24 Queen’s Plate.

But by Friday morning Carroll had decided that only Wilcox would represent the stable in the $1 million, 1 1/4-mile showpiece for Canadian-bred 3-year-olds.

“Wilcox worked extremely well the other day,” said Carroll, who had sent out Wilcox for a seven-furlong drill in 1:28 here Wednesday morning.

ETOBICOKE, Ontario — Pender Harbour drops significantly in class for Sunday’s $125,000 Steady Growth Stakes, a 1 1/16-mile route for Ontario-sired stock at Woodbine.

Pender Harbour garnered the Sovereign Award for Canadian champion 3-year-old last year, during which he swept the final two legs of the Canadian Triple Crown, after finishing third in the Queen’s Plate. He got the winter off after his long 2011 campaign, which ended with a second against older opposition in the Grade 2 Autumn Stakes.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Jim Shircliff has two daughters. Harvey Diamond has two grown children and three grandkids. These longtime friends and their families would like to share a Father’s Day gift Sunday at their familiar stomping grounds of Churchill Downs: a long overdue victory by Twinspired in one of the co-features of a 10-race card.

Perfect Officer and Bridgetown, each coming off a good effort in separate Grade 3 races that produced multiple next-out winners, meet in Sunday’s $150,000 Parx Dash Handicap, a five-furlong sprint on turf.

The 6-year-old Perfect Officer rallied to get up by a nose in the Grade 3 Shakertown at Keeneland two months ago. The horses who finished fourth, fifth, and sixth all returned to win next time out, including Great Attack in the Grade 3 Turf Sprint at Churchill Downs on the Kentucky Derby undercard.