Jockey Victor Lebron won three races from 38 mounts during the time he rode over the Aqueduct inner track this winter. Thursday at Turfway, he surpassed that total in a single evening, winning four races from six mounts.

The 24-year-old jockey, whose family resides in the Florence, Ky., area near Turfway, is back where he calls home, and back winning races. So much so that Lebron entered Friday night's card at Turfway as the leading rider of the winter/spring meet, which began Jan. 1, following the holiday meet in December.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. - As Tony Dutrow gets set to bring one Grade 2 stakes-winning filly back to the races Sunday at Aqueduct, there is another Grade 2 winner in his care that he is equally, if not more, enthusiastic about bringing back later this year.

Seattle Smooth, who ended her 3-year-old season with a victory over Proud Spell in the Grade 2 Cotillion at Philadelphia Park, has been jogging for three weeks at Aqueduct. She will shortly begin galloping and Dutrow is hoping to bring her back to the races in April.

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. - The decision to shorten the Grade 1 Gulfstream Park Turf from 11 to nine furlongs this winter may pay quick dividends with the possibility that the race could attract two of the premier turf horses in training in the U.S., Kip Deville and Einstein.

Trainer Rick Dutrow confirmed on Friday that Kip Deville will make his 2009 debut in the 1 1/8-mile GP Turf. That sets up a possible rematch with two-time defending GP Turf champion Einstein, whom Kip Deville defeated last spring in the Grade 1 Maker's Mark Mile.

NEW ORLEANS - A couple minutes after one of the Fair Grounds outriders made a spectacular catch of a rampaging loose horse going the wrong way at the three-eighths pole here Friday morning, there came a spectacular-looking chestnut with a big white face, going the right way as he galumphed past the three-eighths pole in the midst of a five-furlong work. That was Giant Oak, turning in his second timed workout of the winter as he prepares for the Risen Star Stakes on Feb. 7.

ARCADIA, Calif. - Surf Cat, the millionaire who won six Grade 2 stakes in a four-year racing career, has been retired to stud at Old English Rancho in Sanger, Calif., trainer Bruce Headley said Friday.

Surf Cat, 7, won 9 of 23 starts and $1,045,420 for Marsha Naify and Aase Headley, who is Bruce's wife. A stud fee has not been determined. The stallion was en route to Old English Rancho on Friday, Bruce Headley said.

ARCADIA, Calif. - An upset victory by Where's Scarlet ($94.60) in Thursday's fifth race at Santa Anita has led to a double pick six carryover of $423,985 for Friday's program.

Where's Scarlet was the longest shot in the field. As difficult as she was to find in the pick six, her victory was preceded by an upset win by Tavern ($50.60) in the fourth race. Consecutive wins from those horses left many tickets out of the pick six sequence.

Friday's pick six covers the third through eighth races on an eight-race program that begins at 1 p.m.

ARCADIA, Calif. - Trainer David Bernstein met jockey Martin Pedroza in the paddock before Thursday's second race at Santa Anita with a lump in his throat. Bernstein was about to give Pedroza a leg up on the 7-year-old gelding Return of the King, but admitted that such a routine gesture was far from easy.

The gelding was previously owned by Joseph and Alicia Ortega, who were among nine people killed in a shooting and fire in their home in nearby Covina, Calif., on Dec. 24.

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. - Trainer Dale Romans best described Thursday's eighth race, a first-level allowance event for 3-year-olds, as the promising field walked out of the paddock and headed toward the racetrack.

"This is a Grade 1 never-won-two," he said to his colleague Ken McPeek. "One of us will be happy and four of us will get fired."

Francisco Torres, second-leading rider at Fair Grounds, avoided serious injury in a spill during training hours there Thursday. Torres was working a Mark Frostad-trained filly named Peaceful Forest when she collapsed and died. Torres was taken to University Hospital, where no consequential injuries were found, according to his agent, Derek Ducoing.

Pat Pope, who has nearly 30 years of experience as a racing secretary in Louisiana, Iowa, and Arkansas, was appointed racing secretary at Delaware Park on Thursday.

Pope has worked at Oaklawn Park since 1994. He served as racing secretary at Louisiana Downs from 1980 to 2006 and also held the same position at Prairie Meadows. He replaces Izzy Trejo, who resigned in September to accept a position as a steward at Turf Paradise.

Pope will begin his duties at Delaware in April after the conclusion of Oaklawn's meet. Delaware's 116-day meet begins April 25.