ETOBICOKE, Ontario - Woodbine has been fertile ground for apprentice riders in recent years.

The main case in point is Emma-Jayne Wilson, who gained national recognition with an Eclipse Award for her 2005 campaign. Wilson, who was both the Sovereign Award-winning apprentice and the leading rider at the Woodbine meetings in 2005 and 2006, had been challenged by other apprentices such as Corey Fraser and Justin Stein, who also was an Eclipse Award nominee for 2005.

ALBANY, Calif. - Wednesday's card includes a three-day $48,801 pick six carryover.

The pick six starts with race 3 and ends with the eighth and last race. Post time for the first pick six race is 1:45 p.m. Pacific.

Tricky Day has won the last three times Russell Baze has ridden him and gets Baze again in the first leg, race 3. Tricky Day drew the outside post in a field of eight and is a possible single. Englishman comes in with a two-race win streak, and Newton's Rule also comes in off a win.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Panty Raid, the versatile filly with graded stakes wins on dirt, turf, and synthetic surfaces, has been assigned post 2 as the solid favorite for Thursday's Grade 2 Falls City Handicap, the first of five graded stakes to be run during closing week of the Churchill Downs fall meet.

Retama Park near San Antonio reported double-digit gains in both average daily attendance and handle for the 32-night meet that ended Saturday, increases attributable to fewer nights of racing.

Retama reported average daily attendance of 2,437 patrons a night, up 11 percent from a 51-night meet in 2006. Offtrack handle on Retama's races averaged $781,661 a night, a 24 percent gain over last year. The track also handled an average of $105,709 a night on its races onsite, which was up 38 percent from 2006.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - The Von Hemel Family Trainers have never achieved the kind of renown that, say, the Von Trapp Family Singers got from the movies more than 40 years ago, but in the insular world of horse racing, they are famous in their own right. Don, the 73-year-old patriarch, long ago left his imprint on tracks throughout America's breadbasket, and sons Donnie, 46, and Kelly, 42, have taken the family legacy a generation deeper while campaigning at tracks from Texas to Minnesota.

INGLEWOOD, Calif. - Bobby Frankel won the Breeders' Cup Distaff with Ginger Punch last month, but was not at Monmouth Park, and took little joy out of the day, because the Hall of Fame trainer was back home in California caring for his ill dog, Happy, who is suffering from cancer.

NEW ORLEANS - The horses have been breezing in bunches since the first week in November. The barns on the backstretch are swelling daily with horses from the East and Midwest. And thanks to an early draw schedule, racing programs through Saturday had been finalized as of early Monday afternoon.

The mood around Fair Grounds Race Course? Let's get it on.

ETOBICOKE, Ontario - A pair of shippers from south of the border registered their first stakes wins here at Woodbine on Sunday.

Connections, trained at Hawthorne by Mike Dini, captured the Grade 3, $127,400 Kennedy Road, a six-furlong race for 3-year-olds and upward.

Initiation, trained by Graham Motion at his base in Fair Hill, Md., took the $133,900 Glorious Song, a seven-furlong race for 2-year-old fillies.

The Kennedy Road was the first stakes win at Woodbine for Dini. It was his first graded stakes and the sixth stakes win of his career.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. - The Fall Highweight Handicap on Thursday at Aqueduct is a throwback to an era when horses routinely carried substantial weight in handicap events.

The Fall Highweight on Thanksgiving kicks off HolidayFest, a series of stakes that include the Grade 1 Cigar Mile on Saturday.

The assignments for the $100,000 Fall Highweight at six furlongs range from a low of 126 pounds for Debussy to 134 for Park Avenue Ball.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Shug McGaughey has been known to win races in bunches, so it was deja vu all over again Saturday when Criminologist captured the Cardinal Handicap at Churchill Downs shortly after the Hall of Fame trainer had won the Stuyvesant Handicap at Aqueduct with Hunting.