EDMONTON, Alberta - Thanks to increased financial support from the provincial government, the 2004 Thoroughbred meet that opens Friday will be the richest in Northlands Park history.

The result should be an elevated level of competition, particularly in August, when the 75th running of the Grade 3 Canadian Derby will carry a purse of $250,000, an increase of $100,000 over previous years.

The 72-day meet ends Oct. 30 and comprises 36 stakes. The highlight of the season will be the Aug. 28 Canadian Derby, where entrants are expected from Canada and the U.S.

SASKATOON, Saskatchewan. - Red Parka Mary will be favored to go wire to wire in the first stakes event of the meeting, Friday's $5,000 Adesa Auto Glass Handicap for fillies and mares.

Red Parka Mary, whose lifetime earnings of $90,731 surpass the combined total of her five rivals here, recorded an easy front-running win just six days ago against $6,000 claiming mares. Trainer Pat Murphy obviously feels the race took little out of her and sends her right back at the same six-furlong distance.

ELMONT, N.Y. - Society Selection, who will run in Saturday's Grade 1 Mother Goose at Belmont Park, got acquainted with her new rider, Edgar Prado, during a workout on Tuesday.

Prado, who will replace Jorge Chavez aboard Society Selection in the Mother Goose, worked the filly seven furlongs in 1:27.63, breezing, over Belmont's main track.

Allen Jerkens, who trains Society Selection for Irving and Marjorie Cowan, was pleased with the move.

"She finished up pretty good," Jerkens said. "Coming off the track, [Prado] said it went okay."

INGLEWOOD, Calif. - Ten Most Wanted, who was announced as retired last month, may make a comeback next year if a stud deal is not finalized this fall, trainer Wally Dollase said Tuesday.

Last month, Dollase said Ten Most Wanted had suffered a ligament injury to his right foreleg and was retired.

But after Dollase consulted with veterinarians around the country who said Ten Most Wanted could recover from the injury, Ten Most Wanted underwent a stem cell procedure in an effort to regenerate growth in the damaged ligament.

INGLEWOOD, Calif. - Road trips for turf stakes on the East Coast did not work well for Geronimo and Slew's Prince over Memorial Day weekend.

was eighth in the Turf Monster Handicap at Philadelphia Park.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Everybody has to start somewhere. For David Fortner and John Fahey III, "somewhere" is in the obscurity of the Trackside training facility, where both men have started small stables in the hopes of someday reaching the heights attained by trainers for whom they labored for so long.

Fortner, 43, worked for Elliott Walden for 12 years before opening a public stable last winter. Fahey, 26, worked for D. Wayne Lukas for eight years and for Steve Asmussen for the last two years before being hired last month as private trainer for Don Dizney's Double Diamond Stable.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Even a linguist might require a little while to figure it out, but a racetracker wouldn't. A 10-race Thursday card at Churchill Downs might well be called "The Day of the A Other-Than," a title that almost anyone outside the racing game might find semantically vexing to the point of exasperation.

CHICAGO - Trainer Chris Block still is mulling Mystery Giver's participation Saturday in the Prairie State Festival, six Illinois-bred stakes races at Arlington Park. Tony Mitchell has made up his mind.

Tuesday morning, Mitchell flatly said that Summer Mis, 2003 Illinois Horse of the Year, will sit out the Isaac Murphy Handicap on the Prairie State card. Mitchell said he would hold Summer Mis out of the race because her assigned weight, 128 pounds, was unfair.

ETOBICOKE, Ontario - Racing's eagerness to embrace a Triple Crown winner hit home again recently, with bitter disappointment following the defeat of Smarty Jones in the Belmont Stakes.

Canada experienced the excitement of a Triple Crown last year, when Wando's success in Woodbine's Breeders' Stakes was greeted by euphoria that had not been felt here in many years.

Puzzlement, a graded stakes winner in New York and Florida, died last week at a Florida clinic from complications of a tendon infection.

The infection was diagnosed in February while Puzzlement, a 5-year-old, was in training at Gulfstream Park with trainer Allen Jerkens. A Florida-bred son of Pine Bluff, Puzzlement had been undergoing treatment at the Palm Beach clinic since Feb. 27 until the time of his death.