HOT SPRINGS, Ark. - The Grade 2 Oaklawn Handicap will be worth $400,000 when it is run on April 14 following a $50,000 purse increase that was announced Wednesday. The Grade 3 Count Fleet Sprint Handicap, run on the same closing-day card at Oaklawn, also received a $50,000 increase Wednesday to bring its value to $250,000.

HOT SPRINGS, Ark. - Slamit, a maiden winner at Oaklawn who earlier this month won the $50,000 Spring Stakes at Sam Houston Race Park, is to make his next start in one of two stakes, said his trainer, Tim Ice. The horse is headed to either the Grade 3, $500,000 Illinois Derby at Hawthorne on April 7, or the $100,000 Northern Spur at Oaklawn on April 14.

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. - The distance experiment is over with Will’s Wildcat.

After finishing far back in both the Grade 1 Clark Handicap and Grade 3 Hal’s Hope, Will’s Wildcat is back to doing what he does best, sprinting. A stakes winner at 3, Will’s Wildcat will return to stakes company in the 6 1/2-furlong Sir Shackleton on next Saturday’s Florida Derby undercard.

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Saturday’s Pan American at Gulfstream Park was upgraded from a Grade 3 to a Grade 2 this season, but apparently not many horsemen seemed to care.

A field of only six long-winded specialists was drawn Wednesday for the 1 1/2-mile Pan Am, and the racing office had to struggle just to get a half-dozen horses to sign on for the race.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – There is no bigger proponent of Aqueduct’s main track than trainer Richard Dutrow Jr. Despite the fact he won with 38 percent of his starters during the inner track meet, Dutrow was probably elated when NYRA moved up the opening of the main track to Wednesday, two weeks earlier than scheduled.

Leonard Blach and trainer Tim Ice were adversaries during the 2009 Triple Crown series, when Blach co-raced Kentucky Derby winner Mine That Bird and Ice sent out Summer Bird to take the Belmont Stakes.

Sunday, the men will be on the same team. No Spin, co-owned by Blach and trained by Ice, is one of eight 3-year-olds set to start in the Grade 3, $800,000 Sunland Park Derby. Entries for the 1 1/8-mile race were drawn on Wednesday.

Twice the Appeal, 10th in the 2011 Kentucky Derby, will start in the longest race of his career in Saturday’s $100,000 Tokyo City Cup over 1 1/2 miles on Santa Anita's main track.

Trained by Jeff Bonde, Twice the Appeal has made three subsequent starts since the Kentucky Derby, including a seventh in the Santa Anita Handicap on March 3. A 4-year-old colt, Twice the Appeal won the Sunland Park Derby in a 25-1 upset in March 2011.

Trainer Bob Baffert said he will not start the impressive maiden race winner Mamma Kimbo in an allowance race on Friday at Santa Anita after she sustained a cut on her head earlier this week in an apparent stall accident.

Baffert said the cause of the minor injury was not known.

“I had to stitch her up,” he said. “She cut it on something. She’ll be all right, but we had to treat her.”

Mamma Kimbo won a six-furlong maiden race by 5 1/4 lengths in 1:07.94 on Feb. 18, her career debut for owner Peachtree Stable.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Scratches replaced breakdowns as the topic of the day on this circuit Wednesday as racing at Aqueduct moved from the winterized inner track to the main track.

Eighteen of the 73 horses carded for Wednesday’s nine-race program, or 24.6 percent, were scratched – a high number considering conditions were dry and the track was labeled fast throughout the day.

There are no marquee names scheduled to run in the Grade 3, $500,000 Spiral Stakes at Turfway Park on Saturday, kind of like how it looked on the eve of the race last year. But, it turned out, that look was an illusion.

The Spiral was won by Animal Kingdom, who was making his stakes debut and had yet to run on dirt. But six weeks later, Animal Kingdom won the Kentucky Derby and followed that with a second-place finish in the Preakness Stakes, performances that helped him secure the Eclipse Award as champion 3-year-old male for 2011.