POMONA, Calif. – California horse racing returns to traditional footing Thursday when Fairplex Park launches its 72nd autumn meet on the five-eighths mile dirt track that is home of the Los Angeles County Fair.

Handicappers challenged by the high number (13) of pick six carryovers during Del Mar’s seven-week summer meet will find either comfort or tedium at Fairplex, where the combined win rate of Thoroughbred favorites the past three seasons is 39 percent.

Mark Guidry might have retired from the saddle in 2007, but he spent much of this past spring race riding. But it was not in the conventional sense. Guidry worked on the movie “Secretariat” for about six weeks during part of its shoot at the Evangeline Downs Training Center near Lafayette, La.

The film is now about four weeks from release, and Guidry and several other Louisiana-based horsemen are anxious to see the finished product. Guidry had helped put together a group of locals to participate in the racing scenes, among them Kerwin Clark, Ricky Faul, and C.J. Woodley.

DEL MAR, Calif. – Doug O’Neill, the leading trainer this summer at Del Mar, has been cited for having his horse Argenta test for a high amount of total carbon dioxide (TCO2), commonly referred to as a milkshake, the California Horse Racing Board announced Tuesday.

Argenta finished eighth in the sixth race on Aug. 25 at Del Mar.

POMONA, Calif. – Jockey Martin Pedroza has won a record 606 races at Fairplex Park, but he has never ridden in a match race.

That changes Thursday when the Los Angeles County Fair race meet begins and Pedroza meets former Fairplex kingpin David Flores in match race billed “King of the Ring.”

“It’s just another race,” Pedroza said. He was hiding a grin.

Pedroza, undisputed king of Fairplex with 11 consecutive titles and 12 overall, knows his way around the tight turns of the five-eighth-mile dirt track. What is his secret?

DEL MAR, Calif. – Gotta Have Her has been a mainstay on the Southern California circuit for four seasons, but the move of the Oak Tree meeting from Santa Anita, where she is a terror on the downhill turf course, to Hollywood Park is likely to force her to head out of town for her next start, according to trainer Jenine Sahadi.

“Losing the hill, that was devastating for me,” Sahadi said after Gotta Have Her successfully defended her title Monday at Del Mar in the Grade 2, $150,000 Palomar Handicap for older female turf horses. “We may run in the mile turf race at Keeneland.”

FLORENCE, Ky. – Unlike previous Septembers at Turfway Park, when the prestigious Kentucky Cup brought the fall meet to a crescendo late in the month, the fall-meet highlight is coming early this year.

The Turfway Park Fall Championship – the only stakes race left at the meet after the Kentucky Cup was canceled – will be run this Saturday on the third of 16 fall programs. And even then, the Grade 3, $100,000 race could be overshadowed somewhat.

FLORENCE, Ky. – They’re just skipping the Kentucky Cup for a year – hopefully. Or at least that’s the kind of happy-face spin that the folks at beleaguered Turfway Park feel compelled to put on the 16-day fall meet that begins Thursday night.

ETOBICOKE, Ontario – Monday was a bad day to be a favorite in a yearling sales stakes here as all six, including three at odds-on, bit the dust.

It was a particularly good day to be trainer Liz Charalambous or apprentice rider Omar Moreno, however, as both recorded their first stakes victory.

The stakes were for horses who went through the ring at the local Canadian Thoroughbred Horse Society’s yearling sale.

ETOBICOKE, Ontario – Nice Lady nearly got the job done the last time she cut back from a route to a sprint, and she could be up to snuff on the turnback in Thursday’s Woodbine feature, a nonwinners-of-three allowance for Ontario-sired females.

Nice Lady was a bargain $9,500 claim from her season opener April 16 by trainer Scott Fairlie, who subsequently won a nonwinners-of-two Ontario-sired allowance with her, earning a hefty $35,820. She has competed exclusively at Thursday’s level since then, with mixed success.

Average daily all-sources handle at Monmouth Park for the New Jersey track’s 49-day “Elite Summer Meet” shot up 213 percent over last year, according to figures released by the track Monday night after the meet’s final card.