A New York judge on Thursday cleared the way for the state lottery to name an operator for a long-stalled casino at Aqueduct Racetrack by rejecting a lawsuit seeking to get the bidding process restarted once again.

AUBURN, Wash. – Clair Annette, easy winner of the one-mile King County Handicap in her last start, could have her hands full with a couple of new shooters in the $50,000 Boeing Handicap, a 1 1/16-mile race for fillies and mares Sunday at Emerald Downs.

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - As expected, reigning Horse of the Year Rachel Alexandra will make her next start in the Grade 1, $300,000 Personal Ensign Stakes at Saratoga on Aug. 29, owner Jess Jackson confirmed in a press release Friday.

"Rachel feels very much at home among the great Saratoga fans," Jackson said. "It’s an historic race, named after a great champion. The timing is right for Rachel. She’s been coming back into her stride and this will help her prepare for the rest of her campaign and the Breeders’ Cup later this year."

AUBURN, Wash. – The $50,000 Mount Rainier Handicap isn’t a match race, not technically, anyway, though Assessment and Noosa Beach tower over the other five entrants in Emerald Downs’s final stakes prep for the Grade 3, $250,000 Longacres Mile on Aug. 22.

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - Beau Choix, who has gotten better with each successive start on grass, continued his improving ways Thursday, rallying to a hard-fought head decision over Lonesome Street in the $70,000 Quick Call Stakes for 3-year-olds at Saratoga.
 

Hour by Hour, hero of the Lansing Stakes at Pinnacle Race Course last month, faces eight 3-year-old statebred colts and geldings in the $20,000 Dowling Stakes. The one-mile race honors James Dowling, whose efforts led to the development of Thoroughbred horse racing in Michigan nearly 80 years ago. Post time is 5:46 p.m. Eastern.

The $50,000 Horizon will be run as a $17,500 exhibition event at River Downs on Saturday. Only four 3-year-old accredited Ohio-breds were nominated, and only three were entered. Ohio racing Commission rules stipulate that if a stakes doesn’t attract six betting interests, it must be run as an exhibition, with only the Ohio Thoroughbred fund money, $17,500, as the purse. The 1 1/16-mile turf exhibition will be run at noon Saturday.

Donamire Farm won the biggest race of the Ellis Park meet three summers ago when Pleasant Hill captured the Grade 3 Gardenia Stakes. The venerable Lexington, Ky., stable, owned by Don and Mira Ball, has been a fixture in Kentucky racing for more than 40 years, with its black-on-white silks.

Jazzy Sixes established himself as the quickest runner in Saturday night’s $400,000 Texas Quarter Horse Association Sale Futurity at Sam Houston Race Park, when he set the race’s fastest qualifying time during the trials. Now, he will get tested for class. Jazzy Sixes will take on a competitive field that includes Grade 2 winner Endless Ocean and the Grade 1 placed Executive Precision.
The TQHA Sale Futurity, a restricted Grade 1 run over 350 yards, is the richest race at Sam Houston. It will share a card with the Grade 3, $62,730 Texas Derby Challenge for Quarter Horses.

The stakes schedule at Columbus gets under way Saturday as a field of six 3-year-old fillies will go six furlongs in the $10,000-added Inaugural Stakes.