ELMONT, N.Y. – Beautician, who finished strongly and ended a long winless drought against allowance sprinters at Saratoga last month, is the morning-line favorite to score right back in Thursday’s $70,000 Belle Cherie overnight stakes.

Beautician, runner-up in last year’s Spinaway and Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies, drew the outside post in a field of 11 3-year-old fillies. The daughter of Dehere will be handful if she runs back to her Aug. 29 allowance race, when she rallied from next-to-last to win going away and earned her best Beyer Speed Figure in almost a year, a 90.

The nation’s top 3-year-old filly is now good to go to suburban Philadelphia.

Blind Luck on Tuesday put in her final work for Saturday’s Grade 2, $750,000 Fitz Dixon Cotillion at Parx Racing in Bensalem, Pa. She blew out a half-mile in 48.80 seconds at her Hollywood Park base for trainer Jerry Hollendorfer, and was scheduled to fly to Pennsylvania on Wednesday.

“She went real nice and easy,” Hollendorfer said Tuesday. “I was very happy. “

INGLEWOOD, Calif. – The new name takes a little getting used to – Oak Tree at Hollywood Park.

For 40 years, Oak Tree at Santa Anita was an autumn fixture on the Southern California racing calendar. The race meeting was a springboard for California’s best horses trying to reach the Breeders’ Cup and the season that cultivated the California Cup into one of the nation’s showcase days for statebreds.

All that shifts to Hollywood Park for the first time this year when the Oak Tree meeting opens Thursday night for a 22-day season through Oct. 31.

POMONA, Calif. – The 2010 Los Angeles County Fair meet finished a 15-day run of predictability Monday at Fairplex Park. There were few surprises.

Favorites won nearly 45 percent of Thoroughbred races (71 for 158), Martin Pedroza won his 12th consecutive riding title, and high-volume Doug O’Neill topped the trainer standings for seventh time in nine years.

ELMONT, N.Y. – Though already established as one of the top older horses in training for two straight years, Rail Trip still has much to prove in Saturday’s $750,000 Jockey Club Gold Cup at Belmont Park.

After racing exclusively on the synthetic surfaces at Hollywood Park, Santa Anita, and Del Mar – where he won 8 of 12 starts, including three graded stakes – Rail Trip makes his first start on dirt in the Gold Cup. Not only does Rail Trip have to run off a 12-week layoff, but he has to go 1 1/4 miles against arguably the best horse in training, Blame.

INGLEWOOD, Calif. – Joe Talamo looked down at his left wrist, flexed it back and forth a few times, and made a fist with his left hand.

Seven weeks after he broke that wrist in a spill on the turf course at Del Mar, the hand and wrist were back to normal as Talamo stood in the barn area at Hollywood Park last weekend. Thursday’s opening night of the Oak Tree at Hollywood Park meeting was days away and the 20-year-old jockey was eager to resume race riding.

“They said it was a good break,” he said. “It wasn’t displaced. They just put a cast on it.”

Golden Gate Fields is getting an early start on its plans to highlight 2-year-olds at its upcoming fall meet, with five juvenile races on Friday.

The short Golden Gate summer meeting ends Sunday, with the Big Fresno Fair opening next Wednesday and running for two weeks before racing returns to Golden Gate Fields for the remainder of the year.

MIAMI – He may have been in the minority, but trainer Eddie Plesa Jr. was one guy who didn’t mind all the rain that fell over Calder Race Course and the surrounding area last week. First of all, Plesa was in New Jersey at the time. Secondly, all that wet weather contributed at least in part to the two stakes wins he posted here Saturday with his up-and-coming 3-year-old tandem of Successful Song and El Kingdom.

ETOBICOKE, Ontario – Thursday’s eighth race at Woodbine was originally on the portion of last Friday’s card that was canceled due to high winds. Desire and Fire was a contender in the original version of the Ontario-sired allowance, but the need-to-lead type looks even better Thursday because she’s the lone speed in the one-mile grass route for nonwinners of three races lifetime.

ETOBICOKE, Ontario – Roxy Gap is back at the racetrack, and a trip to the Breeders’ Cup at Churchill Downs is not out of the question.

That passage already might have been booked had misfortune not descended upon Roxy Gap on the morning of Sept. 18, as she was the favorite for Woodbine’s Natalma, in which the winner earned an automatic berth in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf.