ETOBICOKE, Ontario - Roger Attfield has won the Queen's Plate seven times, one shy of the record number of winners saddled by Harry Giddings Jr. between 1911 and 1942.
But Attfield never has won the Queen's Plate with a maiden, which is what he will be attempting to do with Include Us here in Woodbine's $1 million showpiece for Canadian-bred 3-year-olds on June 24.
Include Us has raced six times, with four of those outings coming this season.
ELMONT, N.Y. - While many of this weekend's biggest races will be run at Churchill Downs, the Kentucky-based trainer Eddie Kenneally has sent two of his biggest guns to New York for Belmont Park's two graded events.
Bushfire, who won two Grade 1 races here last summer, is set to make her second start of the year in Saturday's Grade 1, $300,000 Ogden Phipps Handicap at 1 1/8 miles, while Polytrack wonder Mary Delaney will run in Sunday's Grade 2, $150,000 Vagrancy Handicap at seven furlongs.
BOSSIER CITY, La. - Action in the statebred ranks in Louisiana this summer promises to be as hot as the weather.
A couple of key allowance preps last weekend produced at least two possible players for Louisiana Legends Night at Evangeline Downs on June 30 and Louisiana Downs Champions Day on July 21. Both of those programs will be devoted entirely to Louisiana-breds.
Trainer Wes Hawley has begun to move a strong stable of horses into Louisiana Downs after spending the past few months racing in Kentucky. His Louisiana Downs stable will be led by four stakes-quality fillies: Dawn After Dawn, Aly's Vow, Queezee Deezee, and Beyond Infinity.
CHICAGO - Better Talk Now's scintillating win Saturday at Belmont came in the Manhattan Handicap, which at 1 1/4 miles duplicates the distance of the Arlington Million, but Arlington fans envisioning a showdown between 8-year-old Better Talk Now and 9-year-old The Tin Man, the West's grass leader, need to put those visions on hold.
GRAND PRAIRIE, Texas - Kinetic Motion could be California-bound. A troubled second in the $95,130 colts and geldings division of the Texas Thoroughbred Association Sales Futurity last Saturday at Lone Star Park, he is being considered for the Grade 3, $100,000 Hollywood Juvenile Championship at Hollywood Park on July 4, said his trainer, Allen Milligan.
Trainer John Dolan discovered two years ago that there are more important things than winning races.
Like surviving cancer.
On Sunday at Golden Gate Fields, Dolan started his first runner since 2005, when he dispersed the 25 horses in his barn because it was diagnosed he had thyroid cancer.
"That gave me a pretty good scare," Dolan said. "I quit training, but as I recovered I began to buy and sell horses, pinhooking a few."
STOCKTON, Calif. - One of the most important racing seasons for the Northern California fairs, particularly the San Joaquin County Fair, starts Thursday, when the track will stage racing without a Bay Area venue in session.
For the first time since 1988, the racing calendar provides no summer overlap between major tracks and the fair circuit.
AUBURN, Wash. - Ricky Frazier gunned She's All Silk out of the gate in Sunday's 6 1/2-furlong Washington State Legislators Handicap for older fillies and mares, and She's All Silk responded with an opening half-mile in an astonishing 43.80 seconds.
"If I had run seventh today, I know a lot of people would have been second-guessing my ride," said Frazier. "But we ran seventh last time, and I know I was second-guessing the way I rode her that day."