After losing her first two starts off a five-month layoff, Muir Beach returned to form with a half-length win in the Queen of the Green Handicap on Dec. 2. She will look to keep it going Saturday in the $40,000 Mesa Handicap at Turf Paradise, a 6 1/2-furlong event that has lured six fillies and mares.

OLDSMAR, Fla. - Lifestyle is winless in five starts since finishing a troubled sixth in the 2005 Breeders' Cup Sprint, but his last race shows he may be ready to end the streak when he tops a field of seven in the optional claiming feature Saturday at Tampa Bay Downs.

Hot Storm has won four races in 2006 and All for Fashion has made four starts in her entire career, but Friday's Esplanade Stakes for older females at 5 1/2 furlongs on dirt could come down to those two.

Southwest Juvenile Championship winner Remember Me Rose makes her final bid for 2006 2-year-old filly champion in the first of seven 400-yard trials to the Sunland Winter Futurity on Friday afternoon at Sunland Park.

Remember Me Rose's chief competition for the champion 2-year-old filly title is Blues Girl Too, winner of the Grade 1 Los Alamitos Two Million Futurity on Dec. 8. Blues Girl Too was second in the Grade 1 Ed Burke Million and the Grade 1 Golden State Million, both at Los Alamitos.

MIAMI - At quick glance, horseplayers might wonder how six-time winner My Prefered can be eligible for Friday's $17,500 feature race at Calder, which carries a condition that reads "for fillies and mares which have never won three races."

But closer scrutiny of the guidelines for the $25,000 claiming race reveals that 3-year-olds are eligible for the race no matter how many times they've won - giving My Prefered what would appear to be a distinct advantage over her five rivals in the six-furlong dash.

CHICAGO - Most Illinois-bred stakes horses are getting ready for a winter vacation this time of year, with the remaining days of the 2006 Chicago Thoroughbred season dwindling to a precious few and no good place to run until next spring. But I Got a Dream, who won the Jim Edgar Futurity last Saturday at Hawthorne, will go on to Oaklawn Park with trainer Chris Richard to see how he fits in with open stakes horses.

The 73-year-old trainer Robert Schultz spent some 25 years stabling at a training center in northwest Louisiana and racing primarily at Louisiana Downs, but with the promise of serious racing in Texas during the late 1990's, Schultz returned to the state of his birth and has been based at Lone Star, Sam Houston, and Retama ever since. But Schultz, like so many others, has gotten discouraged with the stagnant Texas racing scene, and said he is returning next year to Louisiana with his entire stable.

When Phoenix businessman Paxton Anderson bought a filly named Shin Feign last spring, it was with a long-term goal in mind.

"He wanted to get black type for her, and he thought the best way to go probably was at Turfway Park in the wintertime," said Anderson's trainer, Chuck Simon.

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. - Most of the marquee names stabling in south Florida this winter will be housed at the Palm Meadows training center in Boynton Beach. But two of the biggest stars on the local scene, Showing Up and Nobiz Like Shobiz, will spend the next several months just two stalls apart in Barn 16 at Gulfstream Park, the winter home of trainer Barclay Tagg.

INGLEWOOD, Calif. - The launch of racing on a synthetic surface at Hollywood Park at the track's 36-day fall meeting that ended on Monday resulted in an increase in handle, a dramatic rise in field size, and an improvement in the quality of racing.

But another important category, ontrack attendance, declined compared to the 2005 fall meeting.