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Trainer Graham Motion on Preakness favorite Animal Kingdom bouncing back from the Kentucky Derby. "I'm pleasantly surprised with how he's handled it."

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BALTIMORE - On paper, Life At Ten towers over her six rivals in Saturday's Grade 3, $100,000 Allaire DuPont Distaff at Pimlico. But based on her last two races, Life At Ten still has something to prove.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – The last time Pleasant Prince started, he faced Blame and Zenyatta in the Nov. 6 Breeders’ Cup Classic, finishing ninth of 12.

Suffice to say he isn’t racing against the same level of competition Saturday at Churchill Downs when Pleasant Prince begins his 4-year-old season in a $56,000 third-level allowance with an $80,000 claiming condition that goes as the featured ninth on the card.

Russell Road doesn’t fit the mold of a horse who excels in ultra-short sprints, races in which pure speed often dominates.

So handicappers must ask themselves whether Russell Road’s classy résumé, which includes 16 wins in 25 starts, is enough to compensate for the cutback to 4 1/2 furlongs in the $50,000 It’s Only Money Stakes for West-Virginia-breds at Charles Town.

Ruthenia, unbeaten in two starts at 2 but a disappointment when she stepped up to face graded stakes competition in her 3-year-old debut last month, will try to regain her form in the $50,000, 7 1/2-furlong Pike Creek, the first turf stakes of the season at Delaware Park.

The Elkwood is supposed to be the first turf stakes of the season at Monmouth Park. Mother Nature, however, may have other plans.
Based on the amount of heavy rain that has fallen for most of the week and a forecast that calls for thunderstorms again Saturday, the $75,000 Elkwood could very well be shifted to one mile on the main track.

If that’s the case, trainers Derek Ryan, Mike Petro, and Skip Einhorn will look smart for having the foresight to enter horses with good dirt form, especially on wet tracks.

Nobody exemplifies the eagerness to get back to racing in New England more than jockey Tammi Piermarini. The reigning riding champ, she gets that chance Saturday, when Suffolk Downs opens the 2011 season.

While track officials and horsemen endured an acrimonious winter over purse levels and reeled from yet another legislative setback last year, Piermarini took her act cross-country, riding once at Santa Anita and working her way back east via Arizona and Iowa.

MIAMI – Everybody remembers Dancer’s Image being disqualified from his victory in the 1968 Kentucky Derby after testing positive for trace levels of phenylbutazone. Few remember, however, that he also was disqualified from third and placed eighth for causing interference two weeks later in the Preakness.

Few, that is, except owner-breeder Peter Fuller, who returns 43 years later on Preakness Day with another of his stakes-winning homebreds, Trip for A. J., who will vie for favoritism with recent nemesis Romacaca in Saturday’s $55,000 Sara’s Success at Calder.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia – Once again Classic Alley Kat will be the one to run down when she goes for her second straight stakes win in the $50,000 Senate Appointee for fillies and mares going 6 1/2 furlongs at Hastings Saturday.

Trained by Elizabeth Stolzenberg, Classic Alley Kat has improved dramatically since she won a $5,000 maiden claiming race at Portland Meadows in 2009. Since then Classic Alley Kat has won eight races and she was never threatened when she won the Brighouse Belles by 5 3/4 lengths with Keveh Nicholls aboard April 23.

Sometimes it’s difficult to figure out how a race will shape up. But in the case of the $100,000 James W. Murphy Stakes, there seems little doubt about which horse is headed to the early lead: Joes Blazing Aaron.

“His way is just to get into the race,” trainer Mike Maker said. “We’re going to let him go and do that. He might be better if he puts a little space between himself and the field.”