WHO’S HOT

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Two of last year’s three Triple Crown winners, Shackleford and Ruler On Ice, will square off for the first time since the Travers when an outstanding field of 11 older handicap horses go 1 1/8 miles in Saturday’s $500,000 Donn Handicap at Gulfstream Park.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – There is a lull in the 3-year-old New York stakes program between now and March 4, but a few 3-year-olds whose connections might have designs on stakes down the road are set to meet in Friday’s $62,000 allowance feature at Aqueduct.

Five 3-year-olds will run in a first-level allowance race at six furlongs that could be a stepping-stone to a race like the $100,000 Fred “Cappy” Capossela Stakes here March 10.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. - Alpha, winner of the Grade 3 Withers as well as the Count Fleet Stakes here this winter, will "most likely" skip next month's Gotham Stakes and make his next start in the Grade 1, $1 million Wood Memorial here on April 7, trainer Kiaran McLaughlin said Wednesday.

Alpha was scheduled to leave New York by van on Thursday morning and arrive at the Palm Meadows training center in south Florida on Friday to continue training.

Star Guitar came out of his rousing victory in Saturday’s $200,000 Delta Premier Night Championship no worse for wear, but his path to the all-time Louisiana-bred earnings record isn’t clear.

Union Rags is the slight favorite over Algorithms in the first edition of Daily Racing Form ’s Derby Watch for 2012, and, among individual entrants in Pool 1 of this weekend’s Kentucky Derby Future Wager, Algorithms is slightly favored over Union Rags. Box that exacta, and you’ve tied up the two horses currently viewed as the leading contenders for this year’s Derby, on May 5 at Churchill Downs.

In contrast to the way the “Carnival” party figures to unfold Friday evening, a 10-race card at Fair Grounds will start off quickly. Easily the best race of the day has been slotted as the first, perhaps as a subtle means of getting racing-savvy partiers to the New Orleans track in time for the whole show.

ARCADIA, Calif. – The breakthrough first winner of the current Santa Anita winter-spring meeting cannot occur soon enough for trainer Barry Abrams.

Through Sunday, Abrams was winless with his first 29 starters, which included two second-place finishes and three thirds.

“We’re in a huge slump,” he said at Santa Anita on Wednesday. “They’ll come around. They’ll get better and better. They’ll be some good ones over the next month.”

Oaklawn Park will increase overnight purses $5,000 a day beginning with Thursday’s nine-race program, the Hot Springs, Ark., track announced on Wednesday. There will be a $1,500 increase to all allowance races; a $1,000 boost to all maiden special weight and starter allowance races; and a $200 bump to all claiming races.

The New Jersey Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association will operate Monmouth Park next year under a lease agreement with the state-owned New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority as long as final negotiations on the deal are complete by the end of February, the horsemen’s legal counsel said on Wednesday.