DEL MAR, Calif. - How soon they forget. Special Ring parked last year in the Grade 1 , and in 2002 he smoked a mile on the Del Mar turf in a course-record 1:32.72. But when the 7-year-old gelding returns Sunday from a nine-month layoff, his fan club has thinned while his competition has grown.

DEL MAR, Calif. - With his victory in the Triple Bend Handicap earlier this month at Hollywood Park, ascended to the top of California's sprint division, a spot abdicated by the traveling Pico Central in recent months. Pohave will seek to solidify his hold on that position, and win consecutive races for the first time in his 26-race career, in Sunday's Grade 1, $250,000 Bing Crosby Breeders' Cup Handicap at Del Mar.

The Crosby features the first four finishers from the Grade 1 Triple Bend, with the added element of last year's winner, Beau's Town, shipping in from the Midwest.

ELMONT, N.Y. - is not quite up to playing with the big boys in the handicap division, as he once did, but he is still king among veteran New York-bred stakes horses.

He will be the horse to beat in Sunday's closing-day stakes at Belmont Park, the $100,000-added Evan Shipman Handicap.

Seven New York-breds were entered in the 1 1/16-mile dirt race, including the 2002 winner, . Gander, the 123-pound highweight, won the Evan Shipman in 2000.

ETOBICOKE, Ontario - Slew Valley, the current leader of Woodbine's deep turf division, seeks his third straight victory when he runs in Sunday's Grade 2, $333,300 Chinese Cultural Centre Stakes.

A high-caliber field of eight was drawn for the 1 3/8-mile event, including Grade 1 winner Perfect Soul and Strut the Stage, the first two finishers in last year's running.

DEL MAR, Calif. - Southern Image, the winner of the Santa Anita Handicap and Pimlico Special earlier this year, will miss the $1 million Pacific Classic on Aug. 22 because of the lingering effects of a quarter crack.

Trainer Mike Machowsky said Friday that he has abandoned any hope for a start in the Pacific Classic, fearing that Southern Image could suffer damage to the foot while training.

"He's not going to make it," he said. "He's just tack-walking."

AUBURN, Wash. - Highweights Demon Warlock and Gratitude Attack will square off as the likely co-favorites in Sunday's $100,000 Mt. Rainier Breeders' Cup Handicap at nine furlongs.

Demon Warlock and Gratitude Attack, both of whom are assigned 120 pounds, will head a field of nine older runners in the Mt. Rainier, which is a key prep for the Grade 3, $250,000 Longacres Mile on Aug. 22.

OCEANPORT, N.J. - New York-based trainer Bruce Levine is enjoying a sensational season at Monmouth Park.

Through Friday, Levine's Monmouth division was winning at a 41 percent clip, with 11 victories from only 27 starters. Equally impressive, Levine's runners have hit the board 81 percent of the time.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia - The Vancouver City Council late Thursday gave approval to Hastings Entertainment's application to operate 600 slot machines at the track. The 6-5 vote came after four days of public hearings and debate, and clears the way to move the track's slots application to the next level, the development permit process, which could take more than six months.

Gary Birzer, a 27-year-old jockey based at Mountaineer Park, has been paralyzed from the waist down after severing his spinal cord in an accident on Tuesday night at the West Virginia track, his agent said on Friday.

Birzer, second in the standings at the current meeting, was thrown from Lil Bit of Rouge in the seventh race when that horse broke her leg just past the half-mile pole. Birzer landed on his neck, breaking the C-7 bone in the vertebral column and fracturing his C-6 bone.

Lion Heart picked up five pounds off his hard-fought win in the Long Branch Stakes when Monmouth Park's racing secretary, Mike Dempsey, released the weights Friday for the Grade 1, $1 million Haskell Invitational on Aug. 8.

Lion Heart, who, carrying 116 pounds, scored his first win of the year by a head over My Snookie's Boy in the Grade 3 Long Branch, is the expected starting highweight at 121.

Rock Hard Ten and Tapit are next at 120.