No disrespect to the seven fillies and mares that were entered in the ninth race on Friday at Fair Grounds, but this is the time of year when 2-year-old allowance races at two turns start to bear close watching, with the Triple Crown trailhead not far down the road.

INGLEWOOD, Calif. - It was not possible for Leave a Message to save any ground when she started from post 10 in a field of 12 2-year-old maiden fillies at Hollywood Park on Nov. 18.

In the end, it did not matter. Jockey Corey Nakatani guided Leave a Message to the front, kept her wide throughout, and rode her to a one-length win.

Keeneland Race Course on Tuesday released its stakes schedule for the 2007 spring meet - the first spring meet on the track's new artificial surface - with no changes in traditional race dates and a projected record in purse totals.

Nineteen stakes, including 15 graded races, will be run at the Lexington, Ky., track during a 15-day meet from April 6 to April 27. Nearly $4.3 million in stakes purses will be paid out.

INGLEWOOD, Calif. - Earlier this year, owner Stephen Weeks decided to re-evaluate his involvement in horse racing. Out went his status as a breeder, replaced by a desire to have more horses racing on a regular basis.

"I went into breeding for a while," he said Tuesday morning. "Shoot me if I do that again. It wasn't as much fun. I like the racing. I like the claiming."

Last month, Weeks bought into the partnership that owns the promising 2-year-old gelding No Mentira, who scored a flashy maiden win during the Oak Tree at Santa Anita meeting.

ETOBICOKE, Ontario - Wake At Noon, Canada's Horse of the Year in 2002, makes his third start off a 14-month layoff when he runs in Thursday's Woodbine feature. A third-level allowance worth $78,400, the race will be contested at 1 1/16 miles and has an optional claiming price of $80,000.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. - The run to the first turn at Aqueduct will be key in Thursday's $65,000 Don Rickles Stakes, a spot where the five fastest horses have been at their best on or near the early lead.

CHICAGO - Sometimes, when the temperature dips low during December, there seem to be only two types of races run over the winterized surface at Hawthorne. There are those heats in which a speed horse shoots to the front and never looks back, and those in which too many jockeys get that same lone-speed vision dancing in their head. Then, the pace falls apart and a closer - even one without obviously contending form - will come from far behind and win.

VINTON, La. - Trainer Bob Baffert had a productive trip to Delta Downs, where his two starters in Friday night's Grade 3, $1 million Delta Jackpot combined to earn $240,000. Pirates Deputy picked up $200,000 in graded earnings for his runner-up finish to Birdbirdistheword, a sum that gives him a leg up when it comes to getting into next year's Kentucky Derby. Malt Magic was fourth in the Jackpot and earned $40,000.

"They both ran their heart out," Baffert said after the race. "They go back to California, and we just freshen them up and get them ready for the classics."

Only A.L. "Red" McMurray knows why, of all the possible options, he stopped by the Fair Grounds barn of Josie Carroll in the spring of 2000 to ask if she'd be interested in training a 2-year-old he'd bred across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans in Folsom, La.

Carroll had taken out her trainer's license only six years earlier. She spent most of every season at Woodbine, in Canada, and McMurray was offering her a Louisiana-bred by the obscure sire Rail and out of a mare by the equally obscure sire I'm a Lyre.

ETOBICOKE, Ontario - Trainer Mark Casse is in the midst of winding up his best campaign ever here at Woodbine, leading in stakes winners with 11 and in money won with $4.27 million heading into the final week of the meeting.

"The last 30 days or so we've kind of been changing our mode a little bit," said Casse. "We're running some first-time starters, trying to get a race into them before the end of the year. That's very important, when it comes to their development next year."