Arlington Park revealed its proposed 2011 stakes schedule on Wednesday, a schedule that will save close to $500,000 in purse money compared to 2010.

Arlington will host 22 stakes worth $4.2 million in 2011, provided the Illinois Racing Board approves the schedule at its January meeting. That is down from 26 stakes worth more than $4.7 million in 2010, and reflects the financial realities currently at work at Illinois racetracks, which were rebuffed – as usual – by the state legislature earlier this month in their latest effort to bring slot machines to tracks.

ALTOONA, Iowa – Prairie Meadows will offer 33 stakes worth $2.9 million in 2011. The 67-day meet will run on a Monday-Tuesday-Friday-Saturday schedule April 22 through Aug. 13, and on Sunday July, 3.

The meet will be one week longer on the calendar than last year because the track, in conjunction with its horsemen, have agreed to eliminate four Thursday race cards. Prairie Meadows, which includes a large casino, and the Iowa Horsemen’s Benevolemt and Protective Association are in the second year of a five-year agreement regarding the race meet.

HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – The 3-year-olds that trainer Donnie Von Hemel put on the track over opening weekend at Oaklawn Park performed like they worked for the postal service. They delivered despite snow, rain, and fog.

Oaklawn Park battled all of those conditions last week, losing Friday’s opening-day program to the lingering effects of a snowstorm, and then having fog settle over the oval for the Monday card.

NEW ORLEANS – Fair Grounds followers should remember the grass horse named Diamond Tycoon, who exploded onto the local scene during the winter of 2008-2009 with three consecutive Fair Grounds turf wins, the last of which came in the Grade 3 Fair Grounds Breeders’ Cup Handicap. Diamond Tycoon, who now is a Chilean sire, suffered a career-ending injury before he could contest the $500,000 Mervin Muniz later in the meet, but he already had given Andrew McKeever his only stakes win in a training career that began in 2005.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – The best comes last at Aqueduct when racing resumes Thursday following a two-day break, with the four most lucrative races on the card comprising the late pick four.

The sequence kicks off with the richest race of the afternoon, a $43,000 optional claimer with second-level allowance conditions for New York-bred fillies and mares at one mile. Rogue’s Jewel, who came from off the pace to win the New York Oaks at Finger Lakes last summer, will try to get through this condition after three consecutive runner-up finishes for trainer Carlos Martin.

NEW ORLEANS – The 3-year-old filly Fun Filled has talent. Just watch the replay of her career debut, a good-looking grass win on Oct. 3 at Woodbine. But that race was contested at seven furlongs around one turn, and at odds of 1-2 on Dec. 17 at Fair Grounds, Fun Filled set the pace and faded to finish a distant second in a two-turn mile.

The 1-2 finish by Bourbon Bay and Champ Pegasus in Monday’s $150,000 San Marcos Stakes over 1 1/4 miles on turf might have been the first in a string of meetings by the two horses in the remaining turf marathon stakes of the meeting.

Trainers Neil Drysdale (Bourbon Bay) and Richard Mandella (Champ Pegasus) said they will point their horses to the $150,000 San Luis Obispo Handicap over 1 1/2 miles on turf on Feb. 19, a race that Bourbon Bay won last year.

ARCADIA, Calif. – Blind Luck and Dakota Phone, trainer Jerry Hollendorfer’s leading horses, may not start again at the Santa Anita winter-spring meeting.

Frustrated by what he perceives as the speed-biased nature of the track’s sand-and-clay surface, Hollendorfer said he may not start Blind Luck again at the Santa Anita meet after she was second in the Grade 2 El Encino Stakes on Sunday, her first start since a second-place finish in the Breeders’ Cup Ladies’ Classic at Churchill Downs in November.

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Rogue Victory already won a third-level optional claiming race last summer at Saratoga. With a little luck, he probably could have won another opening week at Gulfstream Park when having to settle for second money following a slow start.

Trainer George Weaver will wheel his hard-knocking grass specialist back on short rest under similar optional claiming conditions in Thursday’s $57,000 main event. A very competitive field of nine, plus one main-track-only horse, was entered to go a mile on the grass.

ARCADIA, Calif. – Jockey Mike Smith had just finished a workout aboard Crisis of Spirit at Santa Anita on Jan. 13 when he shouted an ultimatum to trainer Bob Baffert, who was watching from trackside.

“I want her back,” Smith yelled to Baffert. “She used to be mine.”