Kentucky Derby winner Rich Strike was scheduled to arrive Wednesday afternoon at Churchill Downs, where the colt will be stabled for about a week before leaving May 26 for Belmont Park.

Trainer Eric Reed said Rich Strike will breeze for the first time since his historic 80-1 Derby triumph “either Saturday or Sunday, depending on weather” and will remain here until shipping to New York more than two weeks ahead of his next scheduled start in the Belmont Stakes on June 11.

Luis Saez’s first race aboard Secret Oath was her Kentucky Oaks victory. But the jockey was already familiar with riding for Secret Oath’s trainer, D. Wayne Lukas, having won four graded stakes aboard the Lukas-trained champion Will Take Charge.

That relationship with Lukas was key to Saez getting the mount on Secret Oath for the Oaks and for Saturday’s Preakness at Pimlico.

“Luis and I have a great relationship,” Lukas said.

Kevin McKathan’s name does not appear in the past performances of Triple Crown winner American Pharoah, Hall of Famers Silver Charm and Silverbulletday, and dual classic winner Real Quiet. But he has been integral to the success of those horses and many others.

The multiple Grade 1 winner Life Is Good returned to trainer Todd Pletcher’s Belmont Park barn on Tuesday and he could return to the races in the Grade 2, $250,000 John A. Nerud Stakes at Belmont on July 2.

Life Is Good had been at WinStar Farm in Lexington, Ky., since he returned home from Dubai where he finished fourth as the favorite in the $12 million Dubai World Cup on March 26. Prior to that, Life Is Good had won six of seven starts, including the Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile and the Pegasus World Cup, both Grade 1 races.

CHICAGO - Larry Rivelli, perennially the leading trainer at shuttered Arlington Park, and Chris Block, who long has trained one of the leading strings in Illinois, plan to stable at Colonial Downs in Virginia this summer after Thoroughbred racing in Chicago goes on hiatus between late June and late September.

Rivelli, Block, and every other horseman in Chicago faces the question of what to do with their horses when the Hawthorne spring meet ends June 25. Hawthorne hosts a summer harness meeting before resuming Thoroughbred racing on Sept. 23.

CHICAGO - Hawthorne Race Course will petition the Illinois Racing Board to return to two-day race weeks for the remainder of it’s ongoing spring 2022 race meeting.

Hawthorne ran two-day weeks in April, averaging just 6.46 starters per race during from April 1 to May 2. The Chicago-area track then added Sundays to its Friday to Saturday schedule and since has seen the starters-per-race number fall to 6.21. Hawthorne field size has been negatively impacted by a late spring and rainy weather that has limited use of the turf course to eight races so far this year.

CHICAGO – Even as Hugh Robertson has his stable star Two Emmys back on track after a troubled trip to Keeneland, the Robertson barn might have found its next stable star.  

The 3-year-old colt Omaha Red won a maiden race last Friday at Hawthorne by more than 12 lengths, extending his early lead through the homestretch while not being asked by jockey Jareth Loveberry. Omaha Red ran six furlongs on a fast dirt track in 1:09.43, yielding an 88 Beyer Speed Figure.  

Ken Tohill rode his 4,000th winner Sunday when he piloted Rainbow Surebet to victory in the fourth race at Prairie Meadows.

Tohill, 59, is the 79th jockey to reach the 4,000-win milestone. Russell Baze is the all-time leader with 12,842 winners, more than 3,300 more than Laffit Pincay, who amassed the second-most career wins among North American jockeys. Perry Ouzts, with 7,257 winners, is the leading active jockey by wins.

Epicenter was favored in the Kentucky Derby but finished second. He'll try to go one position better, this time as an even stronger favorite, on Saturday at Pimlico in the Preakness Stakes, for which he drew post 8 in a field of nine on Monday.

Epicenter was a lukewarm 4-1 choice in the Derby, in which he was run down late by the longshot Rich Strike. That colt is passing the Preakness to await the Belmont on June 11, but eight others joined Epicenter in the entry box Monday.

Less than a month before his expected 4-year-old debut in the Grade 1 Metropolitan Mile Handicap at Belmont Park on June 11, Flightline had a familiar pilot for his five-furlong workout in 59.60 seconds at Santa Anita on Monday.

Jockey Flavien Prat, who has ridden Flightline in all three of his wins, flew from his new base in New York to partner the exciting colt. The workout was the first time Prat had been aboard Flightline since the colt won his stakes debut by 11 1/2 lengths in the Grade 1 Malibu Stakes at seven furlongs on Dec. 26.