HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – When last seen at Oaklawn Park, Taptam was being overtaken in the late stages of a stakes. But her second-place finish was hardly a disgrace. Taptam was run down in the Grade 1, $500,000 Apple Blossom by Zenyatta, the mare who by year’s end would be crowned Horse of the Year.

Cali Baby’s biggest opposition when she attempts to win her fifth straight stakes Saturday in the $100,000 Sydney Valentini Handicap at Sunland Park might be the weight she will be spotting her rivals.

Cali Baby is highweighted at 125 pounds for the one-mile race for New Mexico-bred fillies and mares, giving her nine opponents between five and 11 pounds each.

Tamtastic’s big sister, Taptam, is a two-turn whiz and that should bode well for him Saturday night when he makes his first start at a mile in the $100,000 Jim’s Orbit division of the Texas Stallion Stakes at Sam Houston Race Park.

The race is one of two restricted stakes on the card. The $100,000 Two Altazano for 3-year-old fillies at a mile is also part of the Stallion Stakes series. It drew a field of seven, led by Patty’s Pride.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – If Dominant Jeannes can rate, he figures to dominate Saturday’s second-level allowance feature at Aqueduct.

A 4-year-old son of Pleasantly Perfect, Dominant Jeannes has two wins from five career starts, but both came in gate-to-wire fashion. Tom Albertrani, who trains Dominant Jeannes for West Point Thoroughbreds, believes his horse may fare better if he has someone to follow.

Consider Saturday’s $214,550 Los Alamitos Winter Championship to be the rubber match between Jess You and I and Freaky, the winners of the last two runnings of the Grade 1 race.

One of those two geldings is expected to prevail in a field of 10, and assume the role of nation’s leading older Quarter Horse.

Between them, Freaky and Jess You and I have won five championship titles in their careers, 29 races, two of the last three runnings of the Champion of Champions, and have earned $2,514,265.

Both sides expect a victory, with good reason.

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ARCADIA, Calif. – A Grade 1 winner who blazed the second-fastest seven furlongs in track history might be considered a cinch in a seven-furlong Grade 2 at Santa Anita.

Smiling Tiger, however, is no cinch Saturday. One month after relinquishing his title as California’s top sprinter by finishing a dull third in the Grade 2 Palos Verdes, Smiling Tiger tries to restore his reputation in the $150,000 San Carlos Handicap.

ARCADIA, Calif. – Santa Anita Park was awarded the 2011 autumn racing dates historically operated by the Oak Tree Racing Association at a California Horse Racing Board meeting Thursday, ending, at least temporarily, Oak Tree’s 41-year direct involvement in the management of a Southern California race meeting.

After Taqarub got drilled in the Grade 3 Mr. Prospector Handicap at Gulfstream Park last month, trainer Kiaran McLaughlin shipped his 5-year-old horse to the Northeast with the idea of pointing him to the Grade 3 Tom Fool Handicap at Aqueduct on March 5.

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HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. − Catch a Thief and Hyperlink have two things in common entering Saturday’s Grade 3, $100,000 Sabin at Gulfstream Park. Both have won their last two starts, and both will be getting a major class check in their graded stakes debuts.

OLDSMAR, Fla. – Bridgetown and Silver Timber, who finished fourth and fifth behind Chamberlain Bridge in last fall’s Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint, make their first starts since then in Saturday’s $75,000, five-furlong Turf Dash at Tampa Bay Downs.

Bridgetown made just four starts last season as a 3-year-old while racing for trainer Ken McPeek but is now trained by Todd Pletcher. In his 2010 debut, Bridgetown rallied from just off the pace to capture the Latham Stakes at Saratoga, then moved to Monmouth, where he took the 5 1/2-furlong Gilded Times.