High Strike Zone ran like a horse with more on the line than just victory Saturday, when he repulsed two stretch bids and pulled clear to win the $50,000 Ark-La-Tex Handicap at Louisiana Downs. It was a gutsy, front-running effort, and an image that his trainer, Amos Laborde, surely carried with him into surgery on Tuesday.

GRAND PRAIRIE, Texas - A favorable post is one of several factors the front-running Lord of the Track will have going for him Thursday night, when he starts as the probable favorite in the featured eighth race. The 6 1/2-furlong entry-level allowance is for 3-year-olds and up and is restricted to horses bred in Texas.

Lord of the Track drew post 6 in the field of six colts and geldings, and the last time he broke to the outside of all his rivals, he won his maiden from post 10.

AUBURN, Wash. - Trainer Bonnie Jenne had a simple explanation for Mr. Makah's stunning upset of the heavily favored Sabertooth in Sunday's $75,000 Budweiser Emerald Handicap.

"It was the mile distance," she said.

ETOBICOKE, Ontario - Faswiga takes a substantial drop in class from the Nassau Stakes into Thursday's Woodbine headliner, a $62,500 optional claimer going 1 1/16 miles on the grass.

Faswiga wound up second in two stakes in September, the Flaming Page and Ontario Colleen, after adding blinkers. Trainer Ian Howard gave her the winter off after she ran a clunker against males in allowance company Oct. 10.

AUBURN, Wash. - Callie Mae and Cortina head a field of nine fillies and mares in Thursday's feature at Emerald Downs, a $3,500 starter handicap at 1 1/16 miles.

Callie Mae figures as a prime contender off her record of 10 wins from 44 starts against mostly tougher company. Callie Mae, a 6-year-old trained by James Sayler, defeated $8,000 rivals going 1 1/16 miles here last season. She has three fourth-place finishes from as many starts at the meet, having faced $12,500, $10,000, and $7,500 foes.

The unbeaten Bad Rep has flown under the radar screen, even in his own barn.

That will change if the 3-year-old gelding keeps winning. He makes his third start Thursday at Monmouth Park in the featured $51,000 allowance race for New Jersey-breds going six furlongs.

went off at 21-1 in his debut, a 3 1/2-length win on May 22 in which he earned an unimpressive 52 Beyer Figure.

The next race, on June 8, was an eye-opener.

Bad Rep drew off to a 6 1/4-length victory at 12-1, and the Beyer soared to 87.

CHICAGO - Fort Prado and Home of Stars fall well above the median performance level of a typical Illinois-bred turf horse, and rather than face them Saturday in the Black Tie Affair Handicap, a statebred turf stakes on the Prairie State Festival card, the connections of a couple other Illinois-bred grass horses have opted instead for Thursday's featured eighth race, a third-level turf allowance with a $62,5000 claiming option.

But even here, the Illinois-bred pair of Our Last Novel and Persuaggle is in fairly deep.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - It may be difficult to characterize Bobby Frankel as a pinch-hit trainer, but it looks like the Hall of Famer will be one-and-done following the . When Saint Liam, a highly impressive winner of the Foster for Frankel, makes his next start, it will be in the Aug. 6 Whitney Handicap at Saratoga, where the horse will be back in the care of regular trainer Richard Dutrow Jr.

Dutrow said Monday that he watched the Foster on television at his house in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - So what if it's your basic entry-level allowance with horses hardly anyone has heard of? Not only did the Wednesday feature at Churchill Downs draw a full and evenly matched field, but it looks like one of those five-furlong turf races that tends to produce a thrill a second.

Owners and trainers of 3-year-old grass horses will experience an embarrassment of riches with two $500,000 stakes set for Saturday in the Mid-Atlantic region.

Delaware Park offers the Grade 3 Kent Breeders' Cup Stakes at 1 1/8 miles, while Colonial Downs runs the Colonial Turf Cup at 1 3/16 miles.

The Colonial Cup begins the Jacobs Investments' Grand Slam of Grass, which awards a $2 million bonus if a horse wins the Colonial Cup and Virginia Derby at Colonial Downs, the Secretariat at Arlington Park, and the Breeders' Cup Turf at Belmont Park.