But is that fair? This is about as good as racing gets: 12 handicap runners, including two Breeders' Cup holdovers and five 2006 graded stakes winners, will clash Friday in the 132nd running of the $500,000 Clark.

This is the first year the Clark has been upgraded to Grade 1 status, and the depth of the field suggests the raise was justified.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. - Short on experience but long on talent, Mo Cuishle looks to remain undefeated when she faces her sternest test to date in Friday's Grade 2, $150,000 Top Flight Handicap at Aqueduct.

A daughter of Saint Ballado, Mo Cuishle won her first three starts by a combined 15 lengths, including a 7 1/4-length score in the Grade 3 Monmouth Breeders' Cup Oaks on Aug. 13. An illness has kept her from the races since, but she has been training steadily since early October.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. - After a four-day break, Aqueduct's main track re-opened for training on Tuesday and racing was scheduled to resume Wednesday over that surface for the final - and most important - week of Aqueduct's fall meet.

INGLEWOOD, Calif. - It was all in a day's work for trainer Neil Drysdale on Tuesday at Hollywood Park. Work some horses. Get others ready for major races this weekend. Focus on getting some sleep.

About that sleep. Drysdale spent Monday night on a cot in the hospital room where his wife, bloodstock agent Shawn Dugan, gave birth earlier that day to their first child, a daughter named Lita who came in weighing 8 1/2 pounds and was 20 inches tall. The planned delivery required a 5:30 a.m. arrival at the hospital Monday morning.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - The odds of a 3-year-old winning the Grade 1 Clark Handicap on Friday are considerably better than the odds Bright One already has overcome.

"You can feel the excitement going around the building," said media director Lenny Vangilder. "So far the response we've gotten from the community gives us reason to hope for an outstanding season."

SAN MATEO, Calif. - Last month Russell Baze suggested he might break Laffit Pincay Jr.'s all-time record of 9,530 wins by a jockey by Thanksgiving. Baze went into Wednesday's card with 9,519 wins, trailing Pincay by 11, so unless he won with all six of his mounts on Wednesday and then wins with all six of his mounts on Thursday, he won't quite make it.

But he has several live mounts Thursday, so he can markedly close the gap.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. - For as well as he has run this year, Afrashad is still in search of his first stakes victory, something the 4-year-old Smoke Glacken colt may get Thursday when he faces seven rivals in the $100,000 Fall Highweight Handicap, the traditional Thanksgiving Day feature at Aqueduct.

The Fall Highweight, which lost its graded status in 2004, kicks off HolidayFest at Aqueduct, a four-day span in which six stakes will be run over the main track. First post for Thursday's card is 11:25 a.m. with last post on the nine-race card slated for 3:10 p.m.

ETOBICOKE, Ontario - The abundance of speed in Thursday's seventh race at Woodbine could set the table for closers Silver Gun and Dashing Admiral. The race, a $40,000 claimer for 3-year-olds and upward, has a field of 10 and will be run at six furlongs.

MIAMI - Nightmare Affair, who finished third in the Breeders' Cup Sprint, worked four furlongs in 49 seconds here Monday morning, then boarded a van in the afternoon and headed for Maryland, where he will have a possible rematch with Sprint winner Thor's Echo in Saturday's Grade 1 Frank J. De Francis Handicap at Laurel.