On paper, Steve Asmussen's horses for the four sprint stakes on Saturday at Fair Grounds all looked good, but it's the chasm between paper and cold reality that usually gets in the way. Not this time. Asmussen and jockey Shaun Bridgmohan swept all four stakes on the Saturday card, and won two more races for good measure.

Inca King won the $150,000 Bryan Station Stakes in October at Keeneland and the $166,000 Commonwealth Turf Stakes in November at Churchill, and maybe - just maybe - there is some correlation between the presence of Inca King and the fact that the $60,000 Woodchopper Handicap on Monday at Fair Grounds drew a field of only six horses.

NEW ORLEANS - Chamberlain Bridge has won two in a row, and looks dangerous for a three-peat. He looms as the one to beat in Sunday's feature race, the ninth, a second-level allowance at 5 1/2 furlongs on turf.

Chamberlain Bridge has steadily improved since being claimed by owner Maggi Moss and trainer Tom Amoss three races ago, and any forward movement, or even a repeat of his last race, would be enough.

An ugly race marred by two spills that could have been worse has left two Turfway Park jockeys out of action for a while. Kevin Krigger suffered two fractured vertebrae and Inocencio Diego broke his collarbone in separate incidents that involved four horses in the ninth race Wednesday night at the Florence, Ky., track.

Ray Correa, longtime rider and trainer, primarily at Turf Paradise, died Tuesday at age 81.

Correa rode for about 30 years all over the country. His base of operations became Turf Paradise when it opened in 1955. He continued riding into the early 1970's, when he turned his attention to training. He was still training a few horses up to his death.

Canterbury Park has been granted a 67-day Thoroughbred and Quarter Horse meet for 2008 by the Minnesota Racing Commission. The meet will begin May 3 and run through Sept. 1.

The Claiming Crown, held at Ellis Park this year, will return to Canterbury on Aug. 2.

For the first time, there will be a second racetrack in Minnesota, as the commission granted 2008 dates to Running Aces Harness Track. About 60 miles north of Canterbury, Running Aces will hold a 53-day harness meet from April 11 through July 6. The track is scheduled to open a card club in July.

STICKNEY, Ill. - It's a hard-boiled crowd hanging out in the grandstand of Hawthorne Race Course late on a December morning. Cigarette smoke and talk of the early double. But down at the grandstand's east end on Friday was a fresh face not seen here at the track since Nov. 30. And anybody who saw the jockey Lyndie Wade walking around smiling and eating Christmas cookies - even those gritty regulars readying for the day's action - had to feel a warm glow welling up.

NEW ORLEANS - It turns out to have been a matter of concentration for the 3-year-old Steve's Double. Winner of the Grade 3 Perryville Stakes and recent winner of the Tenacious Handicap, Steve's Double has been a changed horse since being gelded.

"Until we gelded him, he was not focused," said trainer Ronny Werner. "He was laying on horses as he was working. He couldn't beat anybody. Now he's got one reason to live, and that's to run."

Hawthorne canceled its Friday card after two races, the third time in a week it has lost most of a program because of wet track conditions.

There has been only minimal precipitation in Chicago this week, but above-freezing temperatures have melted much of the several inches of snow that fell here Saturday and Saturday night.

Jockey Joe Talamo, the leading contender for the Eclipse Award as the outstanding apprentice jockey of 2007, has switched agents, replacing Ron Ebanks with Scotty McClellan, the jockey said on Friday.

Talamo, 18, said the change was made on Thursday and will take effect at the Santa Anita winter-spring meeting that begins on Wednesday.