NEW ORLEANS – Foot problems have been the bugaboo with Shared Sense throughout his career, but he certainly put his best foot forward here at Fair Grounds on Thursday, setting a track record for 1 1/16 miles while recording a career-best Beyer Speed Figure of 103.

Shared Sense, 5, won a pair of Grade 3 derbies – in Indiana and Oklahoma – at age 3, but had just one win in six starts over 18 months since his Oklahoma Derby victory, and was coming off an allowance race at Oaklawn in which he was pulled up by jockey Joel Rosario.

HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – It’s starting to feel like Racing Festival of the South time at Oaklawn.

Temperatures are warming, tent structures are in place in the infield, and top 3-year-olds like Secret Oath are putting in their final works for the Arkansas Derby.

Secret Oath, who will be taking on colts for the first time in the Grade 1, $1.25 million race next Saturday, was the first worker on a clear Friday morning with temperatures in the 40s. She breezed five furlongs by herself in 1:01.

ETOBICOKE, Ontario – Hockey great Mark Messier famously guaranteed a key playoff win for his New York Rangers in 1994, a bold prediction that came true after he scored a hat trick to ice the victory over the New Jersey Devils.

Four equine fatalities at Los Alamitos in the last two weeks has led to several immediate policy changes at the track’s evening meeting for Quarter Horses and lower-level Thoroughbreds.

Mucho Unusual, the winner of the Grade 1 Rodeo Drive Stakes in 2020 and four other stakes, has been retired and will be bred to American Pharoah in coming days, owner and breeder George Krikorian said on Thursday.

Mucho Unusual was flown from California to Kentucky earlier this week. Her retirement was announced by trainer Tim Yakteen in a Twitter message on Thursday.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – An ankle issue, presumably the result of an incident that occurred in the Fountain of Youth Stakes at Gulfstream Park, will keep High Oak from running in the Grade 2 Wood Memorial on April 9 and eliminate any hope of him making the Kentucky Derby, part-owner Lee Einsidler said Wednesday.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – While his brother Rudy Rodriguez is about to wrap up Aqueduct’s 2021-22 winter meet trainers title, Gustavo Rodriguez has put together a solid season of his own.

NEW ORLEANS – A strong comeback race last month has the promising colt Proxy set to return to stakes action on Saturday at Fair Grounds in the Grade 2 New Orleans Classic Stakes, with trainer Mike Stidham hoping the minor physical issues that plagued him last year are in the rearview mirror.

Proxy finished second in the Lecomte and Risen Star here last year, but subsequently was fourth in both the Louisiana Derby and then the Lexington before going to the sidelines. He was idle for more than 10 months before his comeback race.

NEW ORLEANS – Mandaloun’s long international nightmare is over. Stuck in Saudi Arabia for weeks following the Saudi Cup, he finally got back to the United States on Sunday and is currently in quarantine in Chicago through this coming weekend, trainer Brad Cox said Wednesday morning at Fair Grounds.

Cox said he and Juddmonte Farms' Garrett O’Rourke agreed that Mandaloun will get a brief freshening at Juddmonte after he gets out of quarantine.

NEW ORLEANS – Trainers at Fair Grounds were thankful Wednesday morning that the severe weather that hit this city on Tuesday night, and included a tornado that touched down mere miles to the east, did not impact the track, which still is minus two barns from when Hurricane Ida struck last September.

“We dodged a bullet, for sure,” said Scott Blasi, the top assistant to Steve Asmussen. “A lot of people are in worse shape than we are. A lot of people are hurting.”