CALGARY, Alberta - Taiaslew, fifth in the Stampede Park Sprint Championship after a troubled trip, heads a field of six older horses in an optional $40,000 claimer at six furlongs which runs as the featured seventh race here Friday.

Taiaslew, a multiple stakes winner and the champion 3-year-old on this circuit in 2003, is sitting at $399,777 in career earnings with 11 wins from just 22 career starts. Leg problems have limited Taiaslew's starts the past two campaigns, but he is the class of this field. He breaks from post 4 under Stephan Heiler, who has been red hot of late.

SAN MATEO, Calif. - If people are known by the company they keep, so, too, are horses.

Call it class. Call it company lines. It comes out the same.

Combine that quality with speed, and you have a horse worth a long look in Friday night's Bay Meadows feature, a first-level allowance race at one mile.

Dr. Einstein set the pace before being passed in the lane by Kentucky Derby participant Point Determined in February. He also set the pace when he was runner-up to stablemate Passive Income in an overnight stakes at Golden Gate Fields.

BOSSIER CITY, La. - Happy Ticket worked six furlongs in 1:11.40 last Saturday at Louisiana Downs as she continues to train strongly for the Grade 2, $300,000 Fleur de Lis Handicap at Churchill Downs on June 17.

The race will be Happy Ticket's first start since finishing second by a neck to Spun Sugar in the Grade 1, $500,000 Apple Blossom at Oaklawn Park on April 8. Before that race, she was second by a neck to Round Pond in the Grade 3, $175,000 Azeri on March 11.

GRAND PRAIRIE, Texas - Magnum appears to be sitting on a graded stakes win after runner-up finishes in major races in his last two starts. His opportunity to shine comes Monday in the Grade 3, $400,000 Lone Star Park Handicap.

INGLEWOOD, Calif. - Trainer Neil Drysdale will have two of the seven expected starters in Monday's $300,000 Shoemaker Breeders' Cup Mile at Hollywood Park.

He will saddle both Aragorn and Terroplane who are overdue for their first stakes win of the year.

Aragorn, who won the Oak Tree Derby last October, has been second in two major stakes this year, the Grade 1 Kilroe Mile at Santa Anita in March and the Grade 2 San Francisco BC Mile at Golden Gate Fields on April 29.

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. - There may have been a dicey moment or two, but Saturday's Hanshin Handicap, the first graded stakes race of the Arlington meet, will go off as planned. Racing fans will see that just five horses were entered Wednesday in the Hanshin, but it took plenty of work to get that many, and with one fewer horse, the Hanshin might have taken a one-year hiatus.

AUBURN, Wash. - Apprentice Kate Repp knows she was lucky to escape serious injury from the nasty-looking spill she took in Saturday's fourth race at Emerald Downs. Considering that she was unseated while racing on the lead, then executed two summersaults while the horses behind her parted like the Red Sea, she is thankful that she will be able to ride again this weekend.

MIAMI - Shortly after the first crop of 2-year-olds arrived at Kathleen O'Connell's barn this spring from owner-breeder Gilbert Campbell's Stonehedge Farm, O'Connell had a feeling she could be in for a big year.

"I called Mr. Campbell and told him this was the best bunch of 2-year-olds he's ever sent me," O'Connell recalled. "And so far it sure has panned out that way."

The 60th anniversary season at Ruidoso Downs opens on Friday afternoon with Grade 1 futurity winners Okey Dokey Fantasy, Jess Destined, and First Prize Robin in the trials to the Grade 1, $500,000 Ruidoso Futurity.

Racing on opening weekend runs through Monday, Memorial Day, then continues until the traditional Labor Day closing on a Thursday-to-Sunday schedule.

The 60-day season offers $5.4 million in added purse money to overnight and stakes races and projected total purses exceeding $9 million, including horsemen's payments to futurities and derbies.

ETOBICOKE, Ontario - Trainer Danny Vella, whose talented 3-year-old fillies Like a Gem and Knights Templar have fallen victim to the virus sweeping the backstretch here at Woodbine, certainly could use some good news these days.

And perhaps that will come in the form of the old war horse Sir Blitz, a 7-year-old gelding who is slated to make his seasonal bow here in Friday's featured fourth race.