AUBURN, Wash. – Promising 3-year-old First Last Chance, after a winter detour to Kentucky, will headline Saturday’s feature race at Emerald Downs. The card begins at 2 p.m. Pacific, and the feature, a first-level optional $25,000 claimer at 5 1/2 furlongs, is the eighth of nine races.

The purse is a robust $18,000, yet with the Auburn Handicap just a week away, only five horses were signed on for Saturday’s race. The field includes a pair of speedy front-runners, and three others, including First Last Chance, who do their best running from off the pace.

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. – Typically, Dale Romans makes his move later in Arlington’s series of stakes races for 3-year-old grass horses. The Romans-trained Kitten’s Joy won the Grade 1 Secretariat Stakes on Arlington Million Day in 2002, and Romans won that race again in 2010 with Paddy O’Prado.

This year, Romans isn’t waiting around. Silver Max, whose most recent win in a sharp three-race streak came in the May 4 American Turf at Churchill Downs, tops a good field of 10 entrants in the $125,000 Arlington Classic.

C C’s Pal and Winning Image, two mares who came out on the wrong end of photo finishes with Nicole H earlier this season, will take another crack at the five-time stakes winner in Saturday’s $150,000 My Juliet Stakes for female sprinters at Parx Racing.

Nicole H, who won the Grade 2 Distaff at Aqueduct as part of her abbreviated campaign in 2011, nearly added another Grade 2 win to her r é sum é when she was beaten a neck by Magical Feeling in the Barbara Fritchie Handicap at Laurel Park in February. That day, Nicole H nosed out C C’s Pal for second.

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. – Upperline is the horse to beat Saturday in the Grade 3, $150,000 Arlington Matron Stakes, but that also was the case in the 2011, when Upperline could only finish fourth as the 2-1 Matron favorite. And the longer one looks at this year’s Matron, a 1 1/8-mile Polytrack race, the wider grows the range of plausible outcomes. A win by Hemera would qualify as somewhat shocking, but some sort of case can be made for each of the other six entrants.

ELMONT, N.Y. – Jack Sisterson was a member of the University of Louisville’s men’s soccer team in 2006 when his team traveled to New York for a match against St. John’s.

The schedule allowed for a day of sightseeing. While most of Sisterson’s teammates went to visit the Empire State Building or Ground Zero, Sisterson and a buddy took a taxi to Belmont Park.

INGLEWOOD, Calif. – The latest proof that May 2012 will be a month like no other in the life of jockey Mario Gutierrez will occur when he arrives in the paddock at Betfair Hollywood Park for Saturday’s second race.

Gutierrez’s mount in that race for 2-year-olds is maidens is named after him – Cinco de Mario, which commemorates his victory on I’ll Have Another in the Kentucky Derby on May 5. I’ll Have Another and Cinco de Mario are owned by Paul and Zillah Reddam and trained by Doug O’Neill.

Unreachable Star will attempt to win his third William Henry Harrison stake when taking on seven other Indiana-sired horses Saturday afternoon at Indiana Downs. Now 8, the gelding won the 2008 and 2010 runnings of the $84,000 six-furlong event. The only time the Tim Glyshaw trainee has not won in five local attempts was when he finished second in the 2009 running of this race. It will be the first out of the year for Unreachable Star after working well at Churchill Downs. Orlando Mojica will ride.

OCEANPORT, N.J. – Sometimes you have to take a step back to move forward.

Trainer Kelly Breen hopes that philosophy works with Pants On Fire in the $75,000 Skip Away Stakes on Saturday at Monmouth Park.

“We’re just looking to get him back to his winning ways,” Breen said. “He’s had some tough races on the road. Now he’s back home. We want to let him win a heat, and then we’ll see

The 12-race card starting at 12:50 p.m. Eastern kicks off the holiday racing weekend on the Jersey Shore as Monmouth offers three programs through Memorial Day.

ALTOONA, Iowa – Saturday evening’s $60,000 Jim Rasmussen Memorial Stakes, a 1 1/16-mile tuneup for the Grade 3, $300,000 Prairie Meadows Cornhusker Handicap, pits the last two winners of the Rasmussen, Red Lead and Stachys, against the 2010 Cornhusker champ Shadowbdancing.

In the competitive field of eight, Shadowbdancing, a winner of $384,500 in his 10 lifetime races here, tries to revisit past glory. Most recently, the Montbrook-sired 7-year-old horse finished third in the $75,000 Bosselman/Gus Fonner Stakes on April 28. The Rasmussen will be his third start of the season.

C C’s Pal and Winning Image, two mares who came out on the wrong end of photo finishes with Nicole H earlier this season, will take another crack at the five-time stakes winner in Saturday’s $150,000 My Juliet Stakes for female sprinters at Parx Racing.

Nicole H, who won the Grade 2 Distaff at Aqueduct as part of her abbreviated campaign in 2011, nearly added another Grade 2 win to her r é sum é when she was beaten a neck by Magical Feeling in the Barbara Fritchie Handicap at Laurel Park in February. That day, Nicole H nosed out C C’s Pal for second.