ARCADIA, Calif. - Perhaps the final three months of the year will be kinder to California-breds than the first nine months of 2009.

So far this year, no California-bred has won a Grade 1 race. By this time last year, there had been four. On a brighter note, a California-bred 2-year-old, Strike the Tiger, won the Windsor Castle Stakes at the prestigious Royal Ascot meeting in England in June, about the last thing anyone would have forecast at the start of the year.

ARCADIA, Calif. - Jockey Patrick Valenzuela, who has ridden in Louisiana for more than a year but is ineligible to race in California because of a license violation, is seeking reinstatement in California, he said Wednesday.

Valenzuela, recovering from a shoulder injury suffered at Louisiana Downs last month, said he recently requested reinstatement from the California Horse Racing Board.

"I've written a letter to the board," Valenzuela said. "I want to ride here and I want to be closer to my family.

WHO'S HOT

Todd Pletcher

After a snake-bitten Saratoga with 28 second-place finishes, the four-time Eclipse Award winner was back atop the standings with six winners through the first 13 days at Belmont.

While Malibu Prayer dropped from three consecutive graded stakes placings to demolish her rivals in last week's Cat Chat overnight stakes with a career-best Beyer Speed Figure of 99, it has been the 2-year-olds that have led the autumn onslaught:

ETOBICOKE, Ontario - Mullins Beach and Glitter Rox, the one-two finishers in an open allowance race over six furlongs of turf here at Woodbine on Sept. 12, will renew acquaintances in Saturday's $100,000 Avowal.

The Avowal, an open overnight stakes for fillies and mares over seven furlongs of turf, has attracted a field of 13.

Mullins Beach, a 3-year-old trained by Malcolm Pierce, has made her last four starts on turf.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia - According to trainer Doris Harwood, Winning Machine and Noosa Beach, the first- and third-place finishers in the Grade 3, $275,000 British Columbia Derby last Sunday, will be given the winter off.

Winning Machine, owned by Fleur De Lis Stables, had won the Emerald Downs Derby in his previous start, and he closed out the year with 4 wins from 6 starts for earnings of $247,151. Harwood's husband, Jeff, owns Noosa Beach, who won a couple of sprint stakes at Emerald and banked $88,000 for the year.

A man and his horse came to Belmont Park in the spring, hoping to establish themselves on the landscape of Thoroughbred racing. Four months later, that man, trainer Tim Ice, is back with his horse, Summer Bird, who can all but clinch an Eclipse Award for leading 3-year-old with a victory against older horses in Saturday's $750,000 Jockey Club Gold Cup at Belmont Park.

WHO'S HOT

Doug O'Neill

Warm-and-cold trainer Doug O'Neill was hotter than the 100-degree weather during closing week of the Los Angeles County Fair. After a 4-for-67 slog that began at Del Mar, O'Neill rolled the final week of the Fair, winning with 13 of his final 42 starters.

The total at the finish was 16 wins, double second-ranked Cliff Sise, who had eight wins. O'Neill's winners produced a flat-bet profit, thanks to the $43.20 upset by the 3-year-old claimer Elegant Cad.

ARCADIA, Calif. - The major-league gap between the end of Del Mar and the start of the Oak Tree meet at Santa Anita allows handicappers a leisurely opportunity to reflect on summer while contemplating the autumn calendar straight ahead.

Graded stakes in Southern California took a break from Sept. 9, when Gotta Have Her won the closing-day Grade 2 Palomar, until Oak Tree opened Sept. 30 with the Grade 3 Morvich. Yet even during the hiatus, the five-eighths-mile Fairplex Park racetrack provided evidence regarding the validity and/or invalidity of Del Mar form.

WHO'S HOT

Luis Saez

Nobody has been any hotter around here for the past several weeks than apprentice jockey Luis Saez. The 17-year-old from Panama posted a four-bagger for the second consecutive Saturday last weekend that included his first U.S. stakes victory aboard Cinnamon Road in the Needles. Saez, who began riding locally only six weeks ago, has already moved into sixth place in the standings with 40 victories at a meet that began back in late April. He is riding winners at nearly a 25 percent rate.

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. - Joey P. is moving closer to a comeback.

Trainer Ben Perkins Jr. is targeting the $65,000 Eillo Stakes on Oct. 23 at the Meadowlands as Joey P.'s first race since undergoing emergency intestinal surgery in June.

A 7-year-old gelding just shy of $1 million in career earnings, Joey P. captured the 2007 Eillo, and has won both his starts at the Meadowlands.

Joey P. resumed galloping at Monmouth Park in August and has turned in a pair of bullet works in September.