Hall of Fame jockey Mike Smith, who has not ridden since Nov. 29, said on Friday that he expects to emerge from a 14-day quarantine forced by a recent coronavirus positive in time to ride Petruchio in the Grade 2 Los Alamitos Futurity on Dec. 19.

Smith tested positive in advance of scheduled mounts at Los Alamitos last weekend, the initial days of the track’s current three-week Los Angeles County Fair meeting.

Smith said he hopes to be cleared to ride the $200,000 Los Alamitos Futurity. The quarantine period ends on Thursday, he said.

Indiana Grand in Shelbyville, Ind., will race next year on the weekly schedule it adopted this year to take advantage of lack of competition in the simulcast market during the coronavirus pandemic.

The track will run largely on a Monday-through-Thursday schedule, while also holding eight live race cards on Saturday, during a meet running from April 13 to Nov. 4, for a total of 120 live Thoroughbred and Quarter Horse racing dates. The schedule was approved by the Indiana Horse Racing Commission on Thursday.

Trainer Jeff Engler has finally found a home, and he couldn’t be much happier about it.

“We’ve been welcomed here in Florida with open arms,” Engler said this week by phone from Boynton Beach, where he moved his stable for the first time in the spring. “It’s been refreshing. Everybody has been really good to us.”

On Sunday at Los Alamitos, Proud Emma won the Grade 3 Bayakoa Stakes, a $100,000 race at 1 1/16 miles for fillies and mares. She is scheduled to return in a race with similar conditions and twice the prize money in the Grade 3 La Canada Stakes on Jan. 9 at Santa Anita.

“The timing is good,” trainer Peter Miller said.

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Kentucky Downs officials announced Thursday that a sizable portion of the 1 5/16-mile turf course has undergone a major renovation and is expected to be fully ready for the six-day meet in September 2021.

New sod has been laid from the six-furlong pole to the eighth pole, extending 63 feet in width around the sweeping far turn and into the homestretch. The newly laid portions include a perennial trouble spot near the three-eighths pole.

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Friday’s 10-race program will close out with a pair of $47,000 allowance events. And while there should be considerable interest in the field of promising 2-year-olds who’ll square off at a mile on the grass in the ninth race, the primary focus this day will be on the nightcap, which marks the 34th and likely final start in the amazing career of the 10-year-old turf-sprint specialist Pay Any Price.

Trainer Peter Miller, who is based in Southern California, said he plans to have a 12- to 15-horse division at Oaklawn Park, which starts its meet Jan. 22.

“The end of December, early January, we’ll be shipping over there,” Miller said. “We’ve got some coming from California. Half of the horses will come from California, and the other half from Kentucky.”

Miller has a division in Kentucky. Home Base, who has been at Churchill, could be part of the Oaklawn string, Miller said. The horse runs Friday at Aqueduct.

Alex Baldillez established himself as an elite Quarter Horse rider during a 40-year career that included a win in the prestigious All American Futurity. Now, he’s training Thoroughbreds.

Baldillez, who retired from riding in 2015, launched a racing stable this fall at Remington Park. He registered his first win Dec. 3 with Implicator in a maiden special weight route. It was the fifth starter for Baldillez.

“I’m used to being in the saddle,” he said. “It felt awkward to leg up that first jockey on my first horse – then it’s out of my hands.”

Dr. Schivel, unraced since a win in the Grade 1 Del Mar Futurity on Sept. 7, is nearing a return to the racetrack after being given a rest in autumn.

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“He comes in in the next few days,” trainer Mark Glatt said on Wednesday. “We’ll do some diagnostic work on him and hopefully he gets the green light to resume training.

Uncle Boogie earned $12,650 when he won a $32,000 claiming race for maidens at Santa Anita in October in his debut.

It would cost a little more than half of that amount to supplement Uncle Boogie to the Grade 2 Los Alamitos Futurity on Dec. 19. Wednesday, trainer Andrew Lerner said he and owner Eric Homme are trying to decide whether to pay the money and run Uncle Boogie in the Futurity, or run him in the Grade 3 Sham Stakes at a mile at Santa Anita on Jan. 2. The $100,000 Sham Stakes is the first graded stakes for Triple Crown hopefuls at the Santa Anita winter-spring meeting.