Jockey Robby Albarado has not fully recovered from a back injury he sustained during the post parade in the seventh race last Saturday.

Thrown from his mount, Albarado injured his lower back. He walked off from the incident, but is still too sore to ride, according to the track's racing stewards. He is expected back after the Christmas holiday.

A seven-time winner of the riding title at Fair Grounds, Albarado has 6 wins from 23 starts at the current meet. Albarado arrived at the end of November after finishing up the meet at Churchill.

After losing two days of her morning jogs this week after the track was washed away by heavy rains last weekend, Rachel Alexandra was settling back into her morning routine on Friday, jogging against traffic on the outer edges of the Fair Grounds oval.

For just the second time, Rachel Alexandra took a second lap around the track, and her trainer, Steve Asmussen indicated that he planned to let her start galloping in the near future.

Weather forecasts calling for up to 15 inches of snow in central Maryland caused the Maryland Jockey Club to cancel the final day of live racing for 2009 at Laurel Park.

In addition to calling off Saturday's card, officials said that both Laurel and Pimlico would be closed for simulcasting.

The National Weather Service has issued a winter storm warning for Maryland and its neighboring states from Friday evening until late Saturday night, with predictions of 10 to 15 inches of snow in Anne Arundel County.

INGLEWOOD, Calif. - Hall of Fame trainer Bill Mott will have a stable of approximately 12 horses in Southern California beginning next month, including an undetermined number from Khalid Abdullah's Juddmonte Farms.

Mott said on Friday that he will decide which horses will be sent to California after Christmas. The stable will be based at Santa Anita.

"We've just got a couple of horses for the stakes and we're trying to get it together," Mott said. "I'll pick up a few of the Juddmonte horses after Christmas."

Beautician and Blind Luck, the second and third-place finishers of the Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies last month, lead a field of seven 2-year-old fillies entered for Sunday's Grade 1 Hollywood Starlet Stakes.

The field had a surprise entrant in Rose Catherine, who was second in the BC Juvenile Fillies Turf. Trained by Todd Pletcher, Rose Catherine is seeking her first stakes win, and first win on a synthetic main track.

Remington Park in Oklahoma City closed out its 67-date meet Monday night with a 9 percent decline in average daily handle on its races. The track cited the economic downturn as well as a race-week schedule change as factors contributing to the business slide.

Remington handled an average $545,244 a day on its live races this meet. Of that amount, an average $471,101 a day was bet on the track's races at export sites, down 8 percent from 2008's 67-day meet.

Miss Missile, an 11-time stakes winner based in Texas, will be out of action for at least three months after she was found to have a hairline fracture in her left foreleg just before shipping to New Mexico for a stakes in late November.

"We got lucky we found it before we did any structural damage," said Charlie Smith, who owns and trains Miss Missile.

Miss Missile was diagnosed with a nondisplaced hairline fracture in a left front sesamoid. It will simply require time to let the slight fracture heal back together, said Smith.

MIAMI - Any doubts about trainer Jorge Navarro's patience can be answered in three words. La Chica Sensual.

Navarro was advised to give La Chica Sensual, who came within a head of sweeping the filly division of the 2008 Florida Stakes, eight months off after she suffered a tendon injury while training up to the Delta Princess late last fall. Instead, Navarro gave her a full year to recuperate. She'll finally launch her much-awaited comeback going 5 1/2 furlongs under allowance conditions in Saturday's featured 11th race.

A group known as the Fort Erie Racing Consortium has reached a three-year lease agreement with the track's owners, Nordic Gaming, the group announced Thursday.

The consortium is comprised of the Economic Development and Tourism Corporation, the Town of Fort Erie, and the Ontario Horsemen's Benevolent and Protective Association. The agreement will run from 2010 through 2012.

Every year beginning in January, the racing spotlight is cast on Gulfstream Park, the premier track in Florida, which consistently offers some of the best winter racing in the country.

Yet Florida racing deserves more than just seasonal attention. Calder Race Course, which runs from late April until the start of Gulfstream, has become a hot spot for up-and-coming 2-year-olds in recent years, as evidenced by the results of horses who raced there this year.