ETOBICOKE, Ontario - Flaming Heart won the Hill 'n' Dale Stakes in her first local start on June 17, and she will be looking for an encore when she faces five rivals in Sunday's $125,000 Ontario Matron at Woodbine.

The Ontario Matron, for fillies and mares, goes at the same 1 1/16 mile distance as the Hill 'n' Dale.

Flaming Heart, owned by Stronach Stable and trained by Brian Lynch, was making her first start in almost 12 weeks in the Hill 'n' Dale and prevailed by a half-length with Todd Kabel in the irons for the first time."

ETOBICOKE, Ontario - Sophia's Prince, Woodbine's 6 1/2-furlong record holder on the main track, hasn't had much luck on the turf, even though he has banked $140,856 over that surface. He will try to turn his fortunes around at seven furlongs on the grass in Sunday's $75,000 Ontario Jockey Club Stakes.

Sophia's Prince seemed poised to hit the board at the top of the stretch in last year's Grade 1 Atto Mile, only to flip his palate and fade. He got cut off on the backstretch of the Grade 2 Nearctic Handicap in October, but came charging wide to finish a close second.

FORT ERIE, Ontario - Top Ten List, third in the balloting for Canada's champion female turf runner last year, headlines Sunday's $125,000 Rainbow Connection here at Fort Erie.

The Rainbow Connection, for Ontario-sired fillies and mares, is scheduled for five furlongs on turf.

Of the 10 entered, only Top Ten List has won on the grass. She has scored three times on the surface, all in stakes, under her regular rider, Corey Fraser.

OMAHA, Neb. - Horsemen's Park closes out its four-day festival of racing on Sunday with the $100,000 Omaha Stakes slated as the final race of the meeting. A group of 10 well-matched older horses will compete at one mile.

Picking the favorite in the race, let alone the winner, may prove no easy task as horses from throughout the Midwest converge. Texas invader Stockholder, trained by Scott Blasi, and Go Now, in from Churchill Downs for trainer Ron Moquet, are the likely candidates to vie for the favorite's role.

For decades, the Saratoga meet ran four weeks and the stakes schedule never changed, but horse racing is changing at a breakneck pace these days, even at the Spa. It's not your father's Saratoga, so here are the Cliffs Notes for this year's modifications:

It's sound counsel to be prejudiced in favor of well-connected horses at Saratoga. The only problem is the trainers in a typical race will read like a roll call of the sport's household names. What is one to do, for example, in a race where the contenders are being saddled by the likes of Pletcher, Frankel, Dutrow, Mott, Biancone, and McGaughey?

Knowledge of past tendencies can sometimes nudge handicappers in the right direction, so the following snapshots of the 22 trainers with at least five wins at last year's Spa session should come in handy.

2005 Meet Diary

Wednesday, July 27

Racing constantly renews itself every year with a new crop of 2-year-olds, and Saratoga is the holy land for these babies.

Three-year-olds take the spotlight in the historic Travers Stakes, or Midsummer Derby as it is sometimes called, but it is the abundant display of the best-bred 2-year-old Thoroughbreds that characterizes the Saratoga meet every year.

The past performances for Friday's first four Los Alamitos races were inadvertently omitted from certain Daily Racing Form print editions.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Please download races 1-4 past performances by following the links below:

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Turfway Park in Florence, Ky., plans to replace the top layer of its artificial racing surface this August in order to minimize the amount of kickback thrown up by the surface, the president of the track said Friday.

Robert Elliston, Turfway's president, said that the top two inches of the surface, a synthetic blend of wax-coated materials called Polytrack, will be removed and replaced with a slightly different mix of materials. The new materials will then be mixed into the bottom five inches of the surface.