ARCADIA, Calif. – If there is strength in numbers, then trainers Steve Asmussen and Bob Baffert have been hitting the weight room when it comes to 3-year-old males for 2012 at Santa Anita. They have top-line stars and plenty of depth, so they figure to be prominent players in the division’s major stakes, right through the Grade 1 Santa Anita Derby on April 7.

Little Mike, sidelined since April by a cracked shin, ended his 2011 campaign the way it began with a game wire-to-wire victory over the Gulfstream Park turf course on Thursday.

Little Mike, who opened the year with a nose victory in the Grade 3 Ft. Lauderdale, led throughout, then withstood a final surge by Yankee Fourtune to post a similar nose decision in Thursday’s co-featured seventh race, which featured a graded stakes quality field competing under high-priced optional claiming and allowance conditions.

ARCADIA, Calif. – Three undercard stakes Monday at Santa Anita could ultimately overshadow the Grade 1 Malibu on opening day of the winter meet.

Mr. Commons, who threatens to become the top grass miler in California, will be heavily favored in race 8, the Grade 2 Sir Beaufort Stakes for 3-year-olds. Mr. Commons will take a significant drop in class following a troubled fifth in the Breeders’ Cup Mile.

ARCADIA, Calif. – Dancing in Silks, upset winner of the 2009 Breeders’ Cup Sprint, has been unretired and is nearing a workout for his new trainer, Anthony Saavedra. Dancing in Silks won the BC Sprint for trainer Carla Gaines and then made three futile starts this year for Kathy Walsh before he was retired.

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Trainer Chad Brown had originally considered running his stakes-placed 2-year-old prospect Liquidity Trap last weekend in the Dania Beach Stakes at Gulfstream Park. Instead, Brown has decided take the more conservative route, opting instead for Monday’s first-level optional $75,000 claiming feature carded at a mile on the grass.

In 2010, Suntracer raced into December, and, after a brief respite, he began his 2011 campaign in February, making one start in every month since except June. That’s quite a long time for a modern racehorse to go without a significant break from racing, but if the schedule has affected Suntracer, it has only been in a positive manner. Suntracer’s ninth race in 2011 might have been his best race of the year, and if that 2 3/4-length win over 3-year-olds in the Woodchopper Stakes on Nov.

With a new – albeit interim – general manager and new racing secretary, Golden Gate Fields approaches its 101-day winter-spring meeting with a new energy. The Golden Gate meeting begins Monday and runs through June 17.

Golden Gate comes off a fall meet that ended with a 14 percent increase in ontrack handle and a 13 percent increase in attendance from 2010.

“This gives us momentum heading into the 2011-2012 winter-spring season,” interim general manager Joe Morris said.

Two of the 22 runners that Billy Denzik has in his stable at the High Pointe training center in LaGrange, Ky., look like solid contenders in the $50,000 Gowell Stakes when Turfway Park resumes racing Monday afternoon following the two-day Christmas break.

Best of Times, exiting a tough Churchill Downs allowance, and Southern Bling, an allowance winner at the current holiday meet, are part of an oversubscribed field of 2-year-old fillies entered in the Gowell, a six-furlong Polytrack event that anchors a 10-race card.

The plan is working so far, and that’s the part that shocks and fascinates trainer Mike Harrington.

Last spring, Harrington was instructed by his principal client, Heinz Steinmann, to “find another Swiss Yodeler,” a reference to the multiple stakes winner and successful California sire that Steinmann raced and Harrington trained in the 1990’s.

PHOENIX – Top juvenile honors for the Arizona circuit are on the line at Turf Paradise on Monday, when males will contest the $35,000 Lost in the Fog and fillies will contest the $35,000 Arizona Juvenile Fillies. Both races are carded at 6 1/2 furlongs.

The Lost in the Fog drew a field of 10, and eight will go in the Arizona Juvenile Fillies, in which Southern California raider Lasso From El Paso appears the one to beat.