The most pressing problem on the Kentucky racing circuit - no alternative gaming - has begun to reach crisis proportions. Ron Geary, the owner of Ellis Park, told the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission this week that he will reduce race dates this year and will not open the Henderson, Ky., track for the 2010 season, while other track officials are saying they are in similarly dire straits.

BOYNTON BEACH, Fla. - Al Khali, who made a successful North American and 3-year-old debut by winning an allowance race at Gulfstream Park on March 6, will make his next start in the Grade 1, $750,000 Wood Memorial at Aqueduct on April 4, trainer Todd Pletcher said Friday.

ARCADIA, Calif. - Zenyatta, the unbeaten champion older female of 2008, is likely to make her 2009 debut at the Hollywood Park spring-summer meeting, possibly in the $150,000 Milady Handicap on May 23.

Trainer John Shirreffs said Wednesday that Zenyatta continues to show progress in her training. She had her second workout of the year on Monday, breezing a half-mile in 49 seconds at Hollywood Park.

With a limited number of works, Zenyatta won't run in the $500,000 Apple Blossom Handicap at Oaklawn Park on April 4, Shirreffs said. Zenyatta won the Apple Blossom in 2008.

Proud Spell, the champion 3-year-old filly of 2008, rallied to be second to wire-to-wire winner Superior Storm in a 1 1/16-mile optional claiming allowance at Oaklawn Park on Thursday that served as her first start of the year.

The race was to be her stepping-stone to the Grade 1, $500,000 Apple Blossom Handicap at Oaklawn on April 4, and her trainer, Larry Jones, said on Thursday that remains the first major stakes objective for Proud Spell.

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. - The end of the 2009 Gulfstream Park meet will also be the end of an era when trainer Frank Brothers calls it quits after nearly 40 years on the racetrack.

Brothers, 62, said he has been considering retirement for the past year before finally making the decision to end his successful career when the current session ends in late April.

A deal has been struck for the purchase of Fort Erie Race Track, with a not-for-profit partnership to pay El Ad/Nordic Gaming Corporation $35 million for the track. Included in the agreement is a requirement that Nordic conduct a 2009 race meet.

NEW ORLEANS - Since his victory in the Massachusetts Handicap in September 2007, Brass Hat has lost eight straight races, and has finished in the money just twice. When he returned from an eight-month layoff in the minor Dust Commander Stakes at Turfway Park last month, he ran so poorly that the Equibase chart caller summed it up simply. "Dull effort," he wrote.

The focus will be on speed at Sunland Park on Saturday with the $50,000 Bill Thomas Memorial Handicap carded as the day's headliner. Seven of the region's top sprinters will go 6o1/2 furlongs in the Thomas, the afternoon's 11th race.

CHICAGO - Veteran trainer Roy Houghton has seen too many rodeos to look at horses with anything other than cold-eyed realism. A colt he trains named Lui Luhuk seemed at least a little like an Illinois-bred stakes prospect winning his last two starts of 2008 by a combined 9 1/2 lengths. But Houghton still wants to see more.

"I don't know," Houghton said, when asked how far he thought Lui Luhuk might be able to rise. "He ain't beat nothing worth more than $15,000 yet."

Despite yet another delay in the anxiously awaited Aqueduct video-lottery terminal project, New York Racing Association officials say the lack of revenue from that facility won't affect its ability to conduct live racing for at least the next 18 months.