ETOBICOKE, Ontario - Last year marked the 25th anniversary of Bompago's improbable victory in the Queen's Plate for John Cardella, who had claimed the gelding for $40,000 the previous summer.

But the 2008 season wasn't memorable in many other respects for the 78-year-old Cardella, who recorded just eight victories here for the second year in a row.

Cardella certainly has experienced his share of ups and downs in his 57 years on the racetrack, starting out as a groom and taking out his trainer's license in 1964.

MIAMI - Officials at Calder Race Course placed restrictions on a fourth barn on Thursday after a horse from the stable of Henry Suckie exhibited symptoms of a possible neurological disorder earlier that day.

On Monday, Calder placed a quarantine on the barn area and put restrictions on three of its barns when a horse from the stable of leading trainer Bill White tested positive for the equine herpesvirus. That horse was subsequently euthanized.

ETOBICOKE, Ontario - Genius Kinshasa upset the front-running Sand Cove while notching his first stakes in the 35th running of the $125,800 Sir Barton on Wednesday night at Woodbine.

It was the second straight year that Sand Cove lost the mile and a sixteenth Sir Barton as the favorite, despite looking the part of a winner throughout this year's renewal, after setting slow fractions.

INGLEWOOD, Calif. - There is nothing to gain. You people are greedy. The horse has done enough.

That was the tone of the e-mails trainer Doug O'Neill read in September, when it was announced that Lava Man, the 8-year-old seven-time Grade 1 winner, was back in training after a 14-month retirement. The anger in those messages caught O'Neill by surprise.

"I got e-mails from people that didn't know me saying how greedy I am," O'Neill said on a recent weekend morning at his Hollywood Park stable.

WHO'S HOT

WHO'S HOT

Manoel Cruz

Of the three jockeys fighting for the leading rider title at the Tropical at Calder meet, Cruz had the most success last week, winning eight races to vault back atop the standings in defense of his 2008 crown. Cruz recorded a pair of hat tricks on Saturday and Sunday's programs, with all six of those victories coming for different trainers.

Luis Arrango

WHO'S HOT

With jockey Julien Leparoux missing the final two days of the meet last week because of riding engagements in Japan, Calvin Borel was widely expected to win the riding title.

He did, or more accurately, he and Leparoux shared it. Borel won three races Saturday, closing day, to tie Leparoux with 27 winners, but he could not surpass him after Leparoux had won 11 races with 32 mounts over the first four days of racing last week.

Borel was a bit unlucky, with 11 runner-up finishes over the final week; Leparoux had one runner-up finish.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. - By sheer volume, trainer Gary Contessa has been the dominant force in New York the last three winters. He has won more races (210) during the last three inner-track meets than any other trainer in large part because he has had more than twice as many starters (1,293) as any other trainer.

But Contessa said he believes that dominance could come to an end this winter. Sure, he will have roughly 70 to 75 horses based in New York, but that might put him on a little more equal footing with the likes of Bruce Levine, who has been runner-up the last three years.

WHO'S HOT

Levine's 'Buddy's'

Look who's on the Triple Crown trail! Though Buddy's Saint's 82 Beyer Speed Figure made him the second-slowest Remsen winner since the figures became available in 1991, you've got to love the multiple moves put in by the Bruce Levine-trained 2-year-old; plus, any juvenile capable of running a 101 in the fall, as he did as a second-time starter in the Nashua, will conceivably have some 110 horsepower under the hood somewhere down the line.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. - Richard Englander, who won the Eclipse Award as the leading owner in 2001 and 2002, will try his hand at a different aspect of the sport when he becomes a jockey agent for DeShawn Parker. Parker, whose 288 wins through Tuesday tied him for third nationally this year, will move his tack from Mountaineer Racetrack in West Virginia, where he is the leading rider at the fall meet, to Aqueduct after Christmas, according to Englander.

Englander plans to bring Parker to New York in the next few weeks to make introductions to some New York trainers.