A couple of 5-year-old mares trying something a little different are part of an intriguing makeup of the ninth-race feature Sunday at Fair Grounds in New Orleans, where an 11-race card includes three allowance races.

Little Polka Dot, trained by Tom Amoss, will be turning back from distance events to try 5 1/2 furlongs on the turf in the feature, while Five Star Fun, trained by Al Stall Jr., will rise in class after winning back-to-back races as an odds-on favorite in conditioned-claiming company.

ARCADIA, Calif. – Mildly Offensive was such an easy winner in her debut last month that trainer Carla Gaines is unsure what to expect when the filly starts in Sunday’s $100,000 Santa Paula Stakes at Santa Anita.

“It’s always a little scary, the second race after a monster win,” Gaines said. “I have a feeling she’ll do good things.”

Gaines’s confidence stems from the style of Mildly Offensive’s victory on Feb. 19 when she disputed the early lead, took the lead on the turn and won a six-furlong maiden race by 4 1/4 lengths in 1:08.25.

A full gate of 12 looks like a good possibility when the Grade 3, $500,000 Vinery Racing Spiral Stakes is run next Saturday, March 26, at Turfway Park.

Racing officials with the Florence, Ky., track are counting at least 11 3-year-olds as likely for the 1 1/8-mile Polytrack race, with another half-dozen or so possible for when entries are drawn Wednesday evening.

The top contenders in what appears to a wide-open field include Preachintothedevil, King Congie, Crimson China, Positive Response, Decisive Moment, Rescind the Trade, and Thirtyfirststreet.

ARCADIA, Calif. – There will not be any grand prepared speech when jockey Garrett Gomez accepts the George Woolf Memorial Jockey Award at Santa Anita on Sunday. He tried that once to no avail.

“I don’t write anything down, that’s not the person I am,” he said in the jockeys’ room on Thursday afternoon. “The first year I won the Eclipse Award, I was thinking of who I should thank. I started talking and I halfway froze. I couldn’t think of anything.

“I pretty much wing everything.”

The New Jersey Racing Commission on Friday approved an amended 141-day racing schedule for Monmouth Park’s meet this year, but the length of the meet is still considered to be in limbo because of plans by the state to award a lease to operate the track by June 1.

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HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Gulfstream Park racing secretary Dan Bork may owe Christophe Clement and Dale Romans a free lunch after the two horsemen entered five of the eight potential starters in Sunday’s $150,000 Orchid at Gulfsteam Park. The Grade 3 marathon for fillies and mares will be decided at 1 1/2 miles over the outer turf course.

Wink At the Girls was named horse of the year at the Pennsylvania Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Associaton’s dinner Thursday night honoring Parx Racing’s best horses and horsemen for 2010.

As a 5-year-old gelding, Wink At the Girls was claimed for $25,000 in January 2010 and went on to win 6 of 14 starts and $209,410 for owner Richard Malouf and trainer Scott Lake. Wink At the Girls finished the year beating third-level allowance runners in November before he was claimed away for $40,000 in January 2011.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. -- Monzon, the 3-year-old who won the Count Fleet Stakes at Aqueduct on New Year’s Day, is being pointed to the $750,000 Blue Grass Stakes at Keeneland on April 16, trainer Ignacio Correas IV said Friday.

After winning the Count Fleet, Monzon ran in the Sam. F. Davis Stakes, in which he finished fifth, beaten 7 3/4 lengths by Brethren. Correas said the horse came out of that race “a little tired.”

“Physically, he’s 100 percent,” Correas said. “Maybe it wasn’t the race, it was the trip.”

OZONE PARK, N.Y. − Opening Move, a 3-year-old son of Bernardini, gave trainer Kiaran McLaughlin’s New York crew a much-needed lift when he won a maiden race over Aqueduct’s inner track Wednesday.

Three days earlier, the stakes-winning Fort Hughes − also trained by McLaughlin − suffered a fatal breakdown during a workout over Belmont Park’s training track preparing for a start in the Grade 3 Bay Shore at Aqueduct.

“It’s definitely tough for the whole team,” Art Magnuson, the New York-based assistant to McLaughlin, said earlier in the week. “You never get used to it.”

STICKNEY, Ill. – There’s not much more than a week until the end of the Fair Grounds meet, and only a couple weeks after that, Oaklawn Park wraps up its season. An influx of higher-quality racing stock on the Chicago circuit should accompany those closings. For now, Hawthorne is left to fill races with its own winter inventory, which leads to races like Saturday’s nominally featured fourth race.