ARCADIA, Calif. - The turf course will still be wet, which is fine for the top 3-year-old filly Conveyor's Angel, most likely winner of the $75,000 Blue Norther Stakes on Friday at Santa Anita.

The mile race is one of two grass races Friday, the first time the course will have been used since Dec. 27, as Santa Anita emerges from two weeks of rain. Even though the weather has turned downright agreeable - clear skies and 62 degrees midweek - there will be much uncertainty regarding the condition of the turf course, and fitness of horses who missed training.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. - The connections of Board Elligible were considering giving their iron-constituted mare a little break following her second-place finish in last month's Ladies Handicap.

But with the competition around here this time of year fairly soft, and the mare showing no ill effects from a rigorous campaign, Board Elligible will make her 5-year-old debut in Saturday's $75,000 Affectionately Handicap at Aqueduct.

CHICAGO - Arlington Park's 2005 stakes schedule, looking very much like 2004's, was approved Tuesday by the Illinois Racing Board.

The 2005 stakes program, however, eliminates two $75,000 stakes that were run in 2004: the Estrapade, for older turf females, run June 12 last year; and the Black Tie Affair, run July 10 in 2004 as a prep for the Washington Park Handicap. With the Estrapade gone, Arlington runs just one stakes race between its May 13 opening and June 18.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. - In the first of what could be four critical audit reports, the New York Racing Association has been admonished by State Comptroller Alan Hevesi for paying more than $1 million for "inappropriate, unsupported, and excessive travel and entertainment expenses."

The New York Racing Association suspended its clerk of scales and his assistant, with pay, for an indefinite period, pending further developments in an on-going investigation into possible improprieties regarding how much weight jockeys carried in races.

ALBANY, Calif. - With a sunny week on the horizon, Golden Gate Fields racing secretary Sean Greely has carded two turf races for Friday, including the feature, a $25,000 optional claimer at 1 3/8 miles.

The rainy weather that has turned northern and Southern California tracks into virtual quagmires has abated, and, unlike last Saturday, the forecast is good and the races will likely be run.

The course, though, figures to be quite soft and will probably be listed as yielding, so pedigree could go a long way in determining the winner in the feature.

Spritely Walker, a top Louisiana-bred whose last win came at seven furlongs at Delta Downs, will return to those conditions Friday night in the track's $50,000 Cypress.

The two-turn race is a prep for the $200,000 Championship on Louisiana Premier Night on Feb. 5, and it drew a host of stakes winners, including Prince Slew, Setemup Joe, Believe Im Special, and Nitro Chip.

It was only fitting that Turf Paradise rename a stakes in honor of Cotton Fitzsimmons, the former NBA coach and executive with the Phoenix Suns, who regularly held court at his table in the track's turf club. Fitzsimmons, a Phoenix-area icon, died at age 72 last July 24 of complications from cancer.

It's rare for a jockey from New Mexico, Texas, or Oklahoma to be recognized nationally. But that didn't prevent Sunland Park-based Casey Lambert from becoming a finalist for the George Woolf Award. The winner will be announced sometime this month, but Lambert said he is thrilled to just have his name in the hat for the honor.

Jockeys from around the country vote for the winner, with nominations coming from the Jockeys' Guild and Santa Anita.

Despite several inches of rain and flooding that led President Bush to declare Franklin County, Ohio, where Beulah Park is located, a natural disaster area, the track's 75-day winter-spring meeting got off to a successful start last weekend.

Beulah handled more than $2 million from all sources on Monday's nine-race program, the first time that mark has been eclipsed at the track since last March.