AUBURN, Wash. - The scramble to fill races continues at Emerald Downs. The fourth week of the meeting begins Friday at 6 p.m. Pacific with a seven-race program and only 48 potential starters. The feature race, a $12,500 claimer for older horses at one mile, attracted a field of six.

Go With Gusto and Hard Slider, each with a victory at the meeting, will attract the lion’s share of the betting in the feature. Favorites have dominated at the meeting to date, winning 44 percent of the first 103 races.

INGLEWOOD, Calif. – Doug O’Neill’s cell phone rang, as it does quite frequently, on the backstretch at Betfair Hollywood Park on Wednesday morning, interrupting a conversation with a ring tone that summarized the trainer’s recent weeks.

The song was “Life’s Been Good,” the 1978 rock classic by Joe Walsh.

“Hey, it’s been on there for a while, before the Santa Anita Derby,” O’Neill said in his defense.

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. – It’s early. The dog days of summer lurk below the horizon line. But at this early juncture, Arlington Park racing programs present a more appealing handicapping puzzle and offer better betting opportunities than in recent seasons.

As usual, it’s money talking. Increased purses at this meet – up almost $75,000 per day compared with the start of 2011 – resulting from casino impact-fee funds appear to be having their desired effect.

OCEANPORT, N.J. – It’s show time – in every sense – for New Jersey’s Thoroughbred horsemen with the opening of Monmouth Park on Saturday.

The return of the Jersey Shore’s resort track is always an anticipated event for racing fans in the region. There is added pressure this time on the horsemen to deliver a quality show.

For the first time, the meet belongs to the horsemen. After a winter full of twists and turns during which New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie threatened to close Monmouth, the horsemen were awarded the racing permit.

GRAND PRAIRIE, Texas – Lone Star Park on Friday night begins a weekend of races spotlighting Texas-bred and Texas-sired horses. The richest offerings will be a pair of $75,000 Texas Stallion Stakes divisions for 3-year-olds at 1 1/16 miles on Saturday.

Though it was only a jog, Kentucky Derby runner-up Bodemeister apparently made quite the impression on his first day back to the track Wednesday at Churchill Downs, enough to think that he is well on his way to making a start in the Preakness Stakes at Pimlico on May 19.

“Bode super-sharp on track today … Amazing horse,” is what trainer Bob Baffert texted to owner Ahmed Zayat early Wednesday morning after Bodemeister jogged a mile at Churchill.

The post-Derby makeup of the Churchill jockey colony is noticeably different than in prior years. That’s primarily because Julien Leparoux, who has been the dominant rider here the last five years or so, has departed to ride regularly in New York, but also because Robby Albarado and Kent Desormeaux aren’t here, either.

ELMONT, N.Y. – The wet weather that has forced 18 races off the turf in the first nine days of racing at Belmont Park was expected to subside by late Wednesday, perhaps affording the return of grass racing here Thursday or Friday.

Turf or dirt, trainer Kiaran McLaughlin believes Questing will handle the footing on whichever surface Friday’s $72,000, second-level allowance will be run. The seven-furlong race is scheduled for the Widener turf course.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- The first six days are easy. It’s the next 33 that will call on the resources that Ben Huffman, racing secretary at Churchill, can dig down and find.

Huffman and his staff will find the balance of the Churchill spring meet more challenging than they did the first week, when the Kentucky Derby and Oaks and all the supporting stakes and allowance events prove alluring to out-of-town and local horsemen alike.

ETOBICOKE, Ontario – Steven Bahen, who rode his first winner here at Woodbine in 1986 and has been a steady presence here through the ensuing campaigns, has been named this year’s winner of the Avelino Gomez Memorial Award.

Bahen, 46, will become the 28th recipient of the award, which honors the memory of Avelino Gomez, who died following a three-horse spill in the 1980 Woodbine Oaks.

A life-size statue of Gomez overlooks Woodbine’s walking ring and a miniature is presented to each recipient on Woodbine Oaks Day, which this year will be June 3.