NEW ORLEANS -  Changes made to the Fair Grounds turf course during the track's offseason haven't changed racing on the Fair Grounds turf course this season.

INGLEWOOD, Calif. – A good week for Ramon Dominguez keeps getting better.

One day after riding five winners at Aqueduct, the East Coast-based jockey won the first stakes of the 2011 Turf Festival at Hollywood Park, guiding even-money favorite More Than Love ($4) to a nose victory over stubborn pacesetter Starship Flare in the Grade 3 Miesque Stakes.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. - Mike Hushion's extended holiday weekend got even better Friday as Lovely Lil, dismissed at 15-1 by the betting public, scored a front-running, 1 1/4-length victory in Friday's Grade 2, $150,000 Go for Wand Handicap at Aqueduct.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Barns 2 and 14 at Belmont Park are directly across from one another, separated by approximately 25 feet of pavement. The atmosphere at each of those barns on Friday morning was on opposite ends of the spectrum.

Barn 2 is home to Andrew Lakeman, who on Thursday won his first race as a trainer, 4 1/2 years after his riding career ended in a spill at Belmont Park, leaving him paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair. Lakeman won Thursday’s last race, a $25,000 maiden claiming race, with Thisskysabeauty.

INGLEWOOD, Calif. – A neck victory by Muny in the third race Thursday at Hollywood Park made Mike Mitchell the track’s second-leading trainer all time. The win by $40,000 claimer Muny was No. 860 for Mitchell at Hollywood as he passed Charlie Whittingham’s 859.

Mitchell remains a distant second behind the late Bobby Frankel, who won 952 races at Hollywood.

“That just goes to show what a great trainer Bobby was, he’s still [almost] 100 in front,” Mitchell said. “He owned this place.”

MIAMI – Trainer Bill Kaplan lost his original option for the 2012 debut of Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint winner Musical Romance’ when the Sunshine Millions Filly and Mare Sprint was recently transferred from Santa Anita to Gulfstream Park. But Kaplan is still considering sending Musical Romance west for her next start in Santa Anita’s Grade 1 Santa Monica Stakes on Jan. 28.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – The curtain comes down Sunday on the Churchill Downs fall meet, even if Bill Mott doesn’t want it to. More than $4.1 million in stable earnings in less than a month isn’t bad, even for a trainer who already had pretty much everything, including a Hall of Fame bust. In fact it’s awfully good work if you can get it, and even if you outsource it, so to speak.

INGLEWOOD, Calif. – Before leaving town for the Breeders’ Cup, jockey Mike Smith offered a warning to Brice Blanc, one-race substitute rider for Battle Force in a mile turf race for 2-year-old maidens at Santa Anita.

“Don’t get too attached,” Smith said.

It is easy to see why. Battle Force and Blanc stormed from ninth to first, with a burst of late speed that could make him favored Sunday for the third start of his career in the Grade 3 Generous Stakes for 2-year-olds at Hollywood Park.

Grade 1 winner Giant Oak appears to have escaped compromising injury in a training accident that occurred last week at Hawthorne.

Giant Oak was galloping when a horse spooked and ran him into him, injuring the hip and pelvis region on his hind end. Early this week, Giant Oak was vanned from Hawthorne to the Hagyard-Davidson-McGee veterinary clinic in Lexington, Ky., where an MRI, a bone scan, and an ultrasound were performed on the affected area.

NEW ORLEANS – Al Stall had horses entered in six races Thursday, opening day at Fair Grounds, his home track in his hometown. But Stall wasn’t forecasting fireworks. Not even close.

“Every time we have a bunch in, we normally have a bad day, and you go into a spiraling depression,” Stall said Friday morning. “I’m happy just to get one win in situations like that.”