Add Small Kitchen to the list of talented 3-year-old fillies wintering at Fair Grounds.

Small Kitchen, a Corinthian filly bred and owned by Gainesway Thoroughbreds, won her career debut Feb. 2 by almost six lengths, and this past Sunday captured a first-level sprint allowance by more than seven lengths, running six furlongs in a snappy 1:09.88. That time produced a Beyer Speed Figure of 90, which, if anything, seems on the low side.

Trainer Al Stall also said Tuesday that the 3-year-old filly Applauding, twice scratched from Fair Grounds stakes races in 2012, is presently turned out at Claiborne Farm in Kentucky.

HOT SPRINGS, Ark. - Grade 2 winners Alternation and Win Willy, who have been co-highweighted at 120 pounds for the Razorback, both breezed for the race Tuesday at Oaklawn. Alternation went a half-mile in 49.80 seconds, with Oaklawn's head clocker, Jim Hamilton, recording his first quarter-mile in 26.20 seconds and his final quarter in 23.40 seconds. Hamilton also had the horse galloping out five furlongs in 1:02.20.

"We just wanted him to stretch his legs a little and everything went well," said Donnie Von Hemel, who trains Alternation for Pin Oak Stable.

HOT SPRINGS, Ark. - Sabercat, the winner of the Grade 3, $1 million Delta Downs Jackpot in his last start Nov. 19, will make his 3-year-old debut in the Grade 2, $500,000 Rebel at Oaklawn Park, said his trainer, Steve Asmussen. The 1 1/16-mile race is on March 17.

Asmussen said Monday that Corey Nakatani has the mount. The horse was to have flown into Arkansas from Southern California this week. Sabercat, who is owned by Winchell Thoroughbreds, had also been under serious consideration for the Grade 2 San Felipe at Santa Anita on Saturday.

Trainer Al Stall saddled four winners Nov. 24, opening day of the Fair Grounds 2011-12 meeting, but when the calendar flipped to 2012, it’s fair to say that Stall’s meet stalled. It took Stall two months and 48 Fair Grounds starters to win as many races as he took down on that single late November afternoon, but there are signs that the fallow period is fading. The brightest of them was the performance Saturday night at Sam Houston by Cease, who ran himself back into graded stakes competition with a decisive victory in the $150,000 Maxxam Gold Cup.

WGN-TV in Chicago will broadcast the Illinois Derby on April 7, the station and Hawthorne Race Course announced Tuesday.

The one-hour broadcast will air from 5-6 p.m. Central. The broadcast will not be part of the WGN national feed and will be available only in the Chicago area. 

WGN has previously televised the Arlington Million, but this will be its first broadcast of the Illinois Derby, by far the most important race of Hawthorne’s winter-spring meeting. The purse for the Illinois Derby has been boosted back up to $500,000 this year after being cut to $300,000 in 2011.

ARCADIA, Calif. – Much has changed this winter at Santa Anita for an 18-year-old kid who has been riding Thoroughbreds less than one year.

Eswan Flores was virtually anonymous when Santa Anita opened in late December. The apprentice jockey was coming off a 4-for-73 meet at Hollywood Park, had never won a stake, nor ridden in a Grade 1.

When winter began, Flores did not even have his high school diploma.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Students of form have hit the jackpot at Aqueduct the past two winters. Heading into the last four weeks of the current meet, inner track-track favorites are 235 for 569, a 41.3 percent hit rate that rivals last winter’s 42.5 percent and includes a run of 12 consecutive wins by odds-on propositions Feb. 19-24.

Here’s a look at the morning-line choices on Thursday’s card. If history is any indication, at least three are winners listed and quite possibly more.

HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – Trainer Steve Asmussen has been eager to find a race for Sortilege, who on Thursday will start as a top contender in a first-level allowance route for fillies and mares at Oaklawn Park. It has been about six weeks since her last start, which came at Fair Grounds on Jan. 25, and the gap is one that Asmussen would rather not have with Sortilege.

ARCADIA, Calif. - Sanagas, the winner of the Grade 1 Hollywood Turf Cup last November but only sixth in the Grade 2 San Marcos Stakes on Feb. 11, will not start again at Santa Anita this spring, trainer Peter Miller said.

The B.C. 3 Thoroughbreds partnership that owns Sanagas intend to send the 6-year-old gelding to Australia for an expected start in the Melbourne Cup this fall. Sanagas will skip the $150,000 San Luis Rey Stakes on March 18 and the $150,000 San Juan Capistrano Handicap on April 22.