LEXINGTON, Ky. – Shotgun Gulch posted an 11-1 upset Thursday in the Grade 1, $300,000 Vinery Madison at Keeneland when edging Amen Hallelujah, a filly whose eligibility for the race had become a source of controversy.

LEXINGTON, Ky. – The Kentucky Horse Racing Commission on Thursday issued a license to Justin Sallusto, a trainer with 10 starts this year, in order to clear the way for two horses trained by Richard Dutrow to make starts in stakes races at Keeneland.

Your browser does not support iframes

LEXINGTON, Ky. – Yes, it’s a Grade 1 race with a $750,000 purse. But the inextricable significance of the Blue Grass Stakes is its positioning before the Kentucky Derby, and after the Blue Grass is run Saturday over Polytrack at Keeneland, everyone will surely be asking: What did it mean?

Charles Town, W.Va., seems a most unlikely setting to bring the top older horses in training together, but such is life in the slots-infused world of Thoroughbred racing. The $1 million purse offered for the Grade 3 Charles Town Classic brought 10 graded stakes winners to this bullring of a racetrack from California, Florida, Maryland, and New York.

Actually, 14 were entered – including two-time Charles Town Classic winner Researcher – but the race is limited to 10 starters.

HOT SPRINGS, Ark. − In perhaps its strongest running ever, the $100,000 Instant Racing for 3-year-old fillies Saturday at Oaklawn Park has drawn graded stakes winners Dixie City and May Day Rose, who will meet for the first time.

The Instant Racing is one of two stakes supporting the main event on the closing day program, the Grade 1, $1 million Arkansas Derby. The $100,000 Northern Spur for 3-year-olds is the other. Both races will be run at a mile and end at the sixteenth pole, as all one-mile races do at Oaklawn.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – In the enviable position of having two stakes-caliber fillies capable of doing similar things, trainer Mike Hushion and owner John Waken had the luxury of mapping out the schedule they wanted with both Nicole H and Harissa.

ARCADIA, Calif. – A win by Juniper Pass in Sunday’s $150,000 San Juan Capistrano Handicap would be the latest success in the historic race for trainer Ray Bell’s family.

Way back in 1963, Bell’s grandfather, also named Ray, won the race as an owner with the English import Pardao. Trainer Bell was only 9 at the time and did not attend the race, but still recalls the scene at home later that day.

“I remember them bringing home the blanket of flowers and watching the replay on the old Gil Stratton show,” he said.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia – Thanks to help from the provincial government overnight purses at Hastings will see a 19-percent increase from last year when the 2011 racing season begins this Saturday. Stakes purses will jump by 23 percent during the 71-day meet that runs through Oct. 2.

In less than three full years of racing Joy’s Paradise has won 7 of 21 races, on everything from fast to sloppy tracks, on turf to dirt, and at distances ranging from five furlongs to a mile.

One of the few things she hasn’t done is win a stakes race, something she has a strong chance to do Saturday at Lone Star Park when she faces Last Wager, Lady Giacamo, and eight other Texas-bred fillies and mares in the $50,000 JEH Stallion Station Stakes.

LEXINGTON, Ky. - The Franklin Circuit Court in Kentucky issued a temporary restraining order on Thursday that will allow a horse trained by Richard Dutrow to start in the Vinery Madison Stakes at Keeneland today.

The horse, Amen Hallelujah – the 2-1 morning-line favorite – was expected to be scratched after the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission’s Licensing Review Committee denied Dutrow a racing license at a hearing on Wednesday. However, the Franklin Circuit Court’s order will allow the horse to run, according to chief state steward John Veitch.