NEW ORLEANS - Maybe it's the confidence, maybe it's better horses, or maybe it's the change that comes from having a daughter, but whatever it is, jockey Corey Lanerie is having his best Fair Grounds season to date.

Entering racing on Friday, Lanerie had 30 wins from 207 mounts, two wins from the top of the leaderboard.

"This meet's been really good, better than expected," said Lanerie, 35. "Just all of a sudden we accumulated a lot of business from a lot of different trainers. Good trainers."

Beulah Park begins its 70-day winter/spring meet Saturday with the same cast of characters as last fall but with a renewed sense optimism. Mountaineer Racetrack in nearby West Virginia will be closed for January and February this year and Turfway Park is racing a reduced three-day-a-week schedule. Beulah's horse population should benefit and management is hoping that its average starters per race will increase from the already good 9.48 of the fall meet. On the opening day eight-race card, 17 of the 109 horses entered last ran at Mountaineer.

Louisiana Downs will open its 46-date Quarter Horse meet on Saturday with a stakes double for older horses and a number of large fields. Six of the nine races on Saturday have 10 horses.

"Entries have been strong," said Trent McIntosh, director of racing operations and racing secretary for the track. "We have about 2,400 sets of [foal] papers in the office. I think we'll increase field size a little bit."

OZONE PARK, N.Y. - Trainer Gary Contessa was at Gulfstream Park on Thursday, but the primary reason New York's leading trainer the last four years took stalls this winter at the south Florida track was back at Aqueduct. Eightyfiveinafifty, whom Contessa believes could be an important 3-year-old in 2010, returns to the races in a six-furlong maiden race over the inner track.

"I'm incredibly high on him," Contessa said. "I'd be very disappointed if he lost."

Fairmount Park in downstate Illinois near St. Louis will race just three days in 2010, barring an unlikely resolution to an impasse between a labor union and the Illinois Racing Board.

Simon Callaghan is the latest trainer to trade the dampness of Newmarket for the sunny climes of Southern California. The 26-year-old Englishman will have his first starter at Santa Anita on Saturday when he saddles Locksley Hall in a 6 1/2-furlong maiden race on the hillside turf course.

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. - Trainer Anthony Dutrow had never wintered in south Florida prior to this year. Then again, Dutrow never had the type of stable he's brought down from New York for the 2010 Gulfstream meet.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. - After he dominated the jockey standings here the last two winters - and swept every meet on the New York Racing Association circuit in 2009 - it stood to reason that Ramon Dominguez would once again run away with the riding title at Aqueduct's inner-track meet. Somebody forgot to give David Cohen the memo.

Turfway Park announced Thursday that the date for their annual showcase race, the $500,000 Lane's End Stakes, has been changed to March 27, one week later than originally scheduled.

WHO'S HOT

Gary Contessa

After wrapping up his fourth straight New York training title, with 112 wins in 2009, the G-man is the one to catch and beat in 2010 after a New Year's Day triple with Ampart Ridge ($4.20), Star of New York ($3.10), and Wadi Suki ($34). Wadi Suki, nursed along on the front end by the unheralded Nelson DeSouza, is just the latest example that stretch-out sprinters need to be examined closely on the inner track, particularly when drawn toward the inside and likely to control the pace.