INGLEWOOD, Calif. - Despite losing the Grade 1 Stephen Foster Handicap by a nose Saturday, Southern Image validated his reputation as one of the nation's leading handicap horses. He will risk that reputation in the Grade 1 Hollywood Gold Cup on July 10. But is four weeks sufficient recovery time after a grueling race run over a sloppy Churchill Downs racetrack?

"That's always a concern," trainer Mike Machowsky said Tuesday. "We'll see how he acts in the next week or 10 days."

Southern Image returned Sunday to Santa Anita, and early indications are he can run right back.

INGLEWOOD, Calif. - With the obvious exception of Smarty Jones, this year's 3-year-old crop has not distinguished itself, and the dearth of talent is particularly dramatic in California.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Horseplayers who can correctly pronounce Wrzeszcz are in the minority. In contrast, those who like him in Thursday's ninth race - a $51,700, two-other-than allowance - are expected to be in the majority.

(pronounced re-SES-ich) is a winner of two of four starts and is proven as a short-distance turf horse, which gives him an advantage in the ninth race, a five-furlong turf dash.

Since shifting his tack from New York to Delaware Park on Memorial Day, jockey Norberto Arroyo Jr. has won seven races. Three of those wins have come in stakes.

Arroyo's latest score came aboard the 3-year-old filly Becky in Pink, whom he rode to a five-length victory in Tuesday's $53,700 St. Georges Stakes, a 1 1/16-mile race that was moved from the turf to the main track because of heavy rain that soaked the Wilmington, Del., area Monday night.

ETOBICOKE, Ontario - Spice Rack, who is coming off a wake-up effort in her first start on the grass, will take a class drop in Thursday's Woodbine feature, a seven-furlong turf allowance for fillies and mares.

Spice Rack showed promise in her debut at 2, when she dusted $50,000 maidens while receiving a Beyer Figure of 81. She got the winter off after coming up empty in her only other 2-year-old outing in the restricted South Ocean Stakes.

AUBURN, Wash. - Hard-working claiming runners will get their due on Thursday when the filly and mare division of the Stanislaw Ashbaugh Series, which offers enhanced purses for $3,200 starter allowance company, is renewed at 6 1/2 furlongs.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - This past Saturday, trainer Cole Norman trained a horse to a head-turning stakes victory when Boston Express won the Dixie Miss Stakes by 9 3/4 lengths at Louisiana Downs, earning a Beyer Speed Figure of 106.

Saturday in the $150,000 Aristides Handicap at Churchill Downs, he aims for a similar outcome with a horse who has already made an impact in important stakes: Beau's Town.

CHICAGO - Mayo on the Side's people would have hunted another Grade 1 had they been able to get to it. But with no suitable equine transportation for a trip from Kentucky to New York this week, Mayo on the Side will wind up in the Grade 3 Chicago Breeders' Cup Handicap on Saturday at Arlington, rather than the Grade 1 Ogden Phipps Handicap at Belmont.

SAN MATEO, Calif. - It's not often that Bay Meadows offers a stakes-caliber race on a Thursday card.

Although Thursday's feature is an allowance race, a stakes couldn't have come up any tougher than the field of five older fillies and mares entered in a 5 1/2-furlong sprint.

OCEANPORT, N.J. - The pink bridles are back at Monmouth Park.

That means Pat Bottazzi is back in the game.

Bottazzi, a dominant force in New Jersey racing in the early 1990's, has returned as a trainer and owner. He sends out Weston Field in Thursday's $45,000 optional claiming feature at Monmouth. The race has a three-other-than allowance provision and offers a purse of $43,000.

Like many of Bottazzi's best horses in the past, Weston Field arrived via the claim box and will sport the pink bridle and hot-pink-and-black silks of Bottazzi's Pretty Boys Stable.