HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. - Grass racing returned to Gulfstream Park for the first time in nearly six months when Kahiko rallied to victory over the 2-1 favorite Fast as Flight in Friday’s featured ninth event, decided under allowance conditions over the newly renovated course rated good.

Kelly Von Hemel, a longtime trainer based in the Midwest, will begin serving a 15-day suspension on Dec. 9, the opening of the Oaklawn Park meet, after a horse he trained tested positive for a regulated anesthetic.

Miniconjou, a 3-year-old gelding, tested positive for mepivacaine after winning a May 6 starter-allowance race at Oaklawn. The horse was disqualified.

Santa Anita has increased purses for allowance races to record levels and raised the minimum purse for stakes to $100,000 for the track’s winter-spring meeting, which begins on Dec. 26.

Purses for allowance races have been increased $3,000. A first-condition allowance race was worth $69,000 at the 2021-2022 winter meeting, and will be worth $72,000 at the forthcoming meeting. The purse for a third-condition allowance race has been increased from $73,000 to $76,000.

Evin Roman, one of the leading jockeys in Northern California, has been sidelined with a wrist injury sustained in a spill on Nov. 18 that will keep him from riding until late December.

Roman was unseated from 7-5 favorite Top Hat Tigress when the 2-year-old filly clipped heels with a rival in early stretch. The injury did not require surgery, but Roman will wear a cast until mid-December, according to his agent, Leo Rodriguez.

A portion of the $75,000 purse of the Oak Tree Sprint at the Alameda County Fair in Pleasanton, Calif., on July 2 was recently redistributed after second-place finisher Ultimate Bango tested positive for Lasix.

Lasix, a diuretic, is not permitted for use in stakes at Pleasanton.

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The last time Pizza Bianca ran in a Grade 1 race in the United States she won the $1 million Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf at Del Mar in November 2021.

The 2022 season has not been as fruitful.

In four starts this year, Pizza Bianca has one win – the Hilltop Stakes at Pimlico in May. She was later eighth in the Group 1 Coronation Stakes for 3-year-old fillies at Royal Ascot in England in June and fourth in the Grade 2 Sands Point Stakes at Aqueduct in mid-October after a four-month layoff.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. - Seven horses were entered Wednesday for Saturday’s Grade 1, $750,000 Cigar Mile at Aqueduct, but the ink was barely dry on the overnight when one had to scratch.

O Besos, most recently fifth in the Breeders’ Cup Sprint, will not be permitted to run after five horses tested positive for equine herpesvirus in a barn at Churchill Downs, according to Greg Foley, the trainer of O Besos. That barn, which had 14 horses in it, had been placed under quarantine on Tuesday.

A number of racetracks have placed bans on shippers from Churchill Downs in Louisville, Ky., after a sick horse who was removed from the grounds on Tuesday tested positive for equine herpesvirus.

The bans were put in place by the tracks owned by 1/ST Racing, which include Gulfstream Park in Florida and Santa Anita Park in Southern California, as well as by Oaklawn Park in Arkansas and the New York Racing Association, which is racing at Aqueduct.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. - O Besos nearly lost the Cigar Mile before he passed through the entry box.

Hoosier Philly, unbeaten in three starts and a smooth winner of the Golden Rod Stakes on Nov. 26 at Churchill, is getting a freshening at Woodford Farm in Ocala, Fla., before joining Tom Amoss’s string at Fair Grounds in late December.

A five-length winner in the Golden Rod after an even easier score in the Rags to Riches Stakes, Hoosier Philly, if all goes well, could make her 2023 debut in the Feb. 18 Rachel Alexandra Stakes at Fair Grounds.