NEW ORLEANS - Florida invader Einstein overcame a nightmare trip to win the Grade 2, $500,000 Mervin H. Muniz Handicap on Saturday at Fair Grounds.

Einstein ($8.80), with Robby Albarado aboard, was carried wide into the first turn, then had to avoid the eased favorite King's Drama down the backstretch. Einstein produced a furious rally in the final furlong to win by a half-length over Cloudy's Knight.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Cowtown Cat may have trouble cracking a top 10 list of trainer Todd Pletcher’s Kentucky Derby prospects. But in Saturday’s $200,000 Gotham Stakes for 3-year-olds at Aqueduct, the Pletcher-trained Cowtown Cat was second to none.

In his first start around two turns, Cowtown Cat split horses turning for home and wore down a stubborn Wafi City inside the sixteenth pole to win the Grade 3 Gotham by 2 1/2 lengths. Wafi City, who took over from pace-setting Wollaston Bay at the quarter pole, held second by a head over even-money favorite Summer Doldrums.

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. - Minister's Bid, who spent a good part of last summer at Saratoga chasing Bernardini in the Jim Dandy and Travers, is getting closer to returning to action after working five furlongs in 59.80 seconds here on Saturday.

Minister's Bid, a son of Deputy Minister owned by John Oxley and trained by John Ward, was an easy winner of his first two starts before finishing a distant second behind Bernardini in the Grade 2 Dwyer. He then lost all chance following trouble at the starting gate in the Travers.

Magna Graduate's class showed in the Grade 3, $150,000 Razorback Breeders' Cup Handicap on Friday, when he drove to a 1 3/4-length win over Student Council in the 1 1/16-mile race at Oaklawn Park. It was another half-length back in third to Jonesboro.

HOT SPRINGS, Ark. - With the arrival of Teuflesberg from Fair Grounds in New Orleans on Thursday night, all seven early probables for Saturday's Grade 3, $300,000 Rebel Stakes are on the grounds at Oaklawn Park. The 1 1/16-mile race is the final prep for the Grade 2, $1 million Arkansas Derby here April 14.

Teuflesberg will be one of the top choices in the Rebel off his victory in the $250,000 Southwest Stakes at Oaklawn on Feb. 19. He earned a career-best Beyer Figure of 100 in that race. Teuflesberg trained here on Friday.

ARCADIA, Calif. - No colt running Sunday at Santa Anita has more valuable bloodlines than C'Mon Tiger, sired by Storm Cat and produced by the dam of Breeders' Cup Classic winner Tiznow. But the question facing C'Mon Tiger is less about pedigree and more about performance.

Specifically, is he good enough to win the $75,000 Santana Mile?

"I was waiting for a two-other-than, but it came up too quick," said Bob Baffert, trainer of C'Mon Tiger. "I am sort of forced to run here."

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Churchill Downs is looking to add some spice to its Kentucky Derby Future Wager in the coming years, although the computer technology that would allow the bet to expand to every Derby nominee is not yet available.

A total of 22 events worth a combined $1,785,000 make up the stakes schedule of the upcoming Evangeline Downs meeting, which gets under way in Opelousas, La., on April 4 and runs through Labor Day, Sept. 3.

Eleven races will be worth six figures, up from last year's total of five. The Evangeline Mile on Aug. 11, the meeting's premier event for older horses, will be worth $200,000, an increase of $50,000 from last season. Louisiana-breds will be in the spotlight on Louisiana Legends Night, which features 11 stakes worth more than $885,000.

STICKNEY, Ill. - It's no secret that the first meet of the year in Chicago - whether it was at the defunct Sportsman's Park or here at Hawthorne Race Course - tends to attract short fields, but the Friday-for-Sunday draw presented a special challenge for the Hawthorne racing office. Track racing secretary Gary Duch predicted Friday morning that putting together a whole card would be a challenge. It eventually got done, but only 58 horses were entered on the nine-race card, an average of only about 6.4 per race.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. - Had everything gone according to plan, Sports Town probably would have run in Saturday's Grade 3 Gotham Stakes at Aqueduct. But when Sports Town came out of his third-place finish in last month's Whirlaway Stakes with an illness, trainer John Terranova had to revise his plan.

With Sports Town now seemingly over his infirmities, the talented 3-year-old colt is back on the work tab, and Terranova is hoping to make it to the Grade 2, $500,000 Lane's End Stakes at Turfway Park on March 24.