ARCADIA, Calif. - Esmay rarely gets any respect, and value-minded horseplayers could not care any less. Nine fillies and mares entered Thursday's seventh-race feature at Santa Anita, where Esmay promises to outrun her odds in the 1 1/8-mile turf race.

NEW ORLEANS - So far, the strategy of investing in every horse making its first start for trainer Becky Maker has been sound. Maker, in her second year as a head trainer, has run 19 such horses, winning with five of them for a whopping average return on a $2 investment of $4.33.

In the Fair Grounds featured ninth race Thursday, Galatea Cat makes her first start since entering Maker's barn. Maker hasn't done anything extraordinary to change the way Galatea Cat trains and races, and to win this start, she shouldn't have had to.

ARCADIA, Calif. - Breeders' Cup Classic winner Pleasantly Perfect and BC Juvenile winner Action This Day tuned up for comebacks with visually impressive workouts Tuesday at Santa Anita for trainer Richard Mandella. Both horses worked in company after the 9 a.m. renovation break. Pleasantly Perfect worked six furlongs in 1:12.40 under Alex Solis, and Action This Day worked a mile in 1:39.40 under David Flores.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. - Green Jeans may be the least accomplished of the 10 fillies and mares being considered for Saturday's Grade 3, $100,000 Affectionately Handicap at Aqueduct, but she also may be the one with the most potential.

Green Jeans, a 5-year-old daughter of Green Dancer, seemed on her way to stakes competition last year, winning three of five starts. All three wins came over Aqueduct's inner track, including two-length scores in second and third-level allowance races. Overall, Green Jeans is 4 for 9.

ALBANY, Calif. - With the first derby of the year only two days away at Golden Gate Fields, now is a great time to have an improving 3-year-old.

Trainer Lonnie Arterburn has two: Lava Man, who will run in Thursday's co-feature, a one-mile, $40,000 starter allowance race on the turf, and Kilgowan, who is nominated for Saturday's Grade 3, $100,000 Golden Gate Derby but who is more likely to run in an allowance race Friday, if it fills.

Tampa Bay Downs and Gulfstream Park in Florida have reached an agreement to swap their racing signals, but the two tracks remain far apart on an agreement to allow Tampa to take bets on other simulcast signals, Tampa's general manager said Tuesday.

The general manager, Peter Berube, said the agreement will allow Tampa to take the Gulfstream signal throughout Gulfstream's 2004 meet, which ends on April 25. Tampa had been blocked from taking the signal since Gulfstream started racing on Jan. 3. The agreement will also allow Gulfstream to offer the Tampa signal to its fans.

Officials of Mountaineer Race Track and representatives of the track's horsemen met on Tuesday afternoon to attempt to resolve an impasse that has shuttered racing and simulcasting at the West Virginia track and casino since the start of the year.

The negotiations were still ongoing as of late Tuesday afternoon, according to representatives of the horsemen and the track. Mountaineer is not scheduled to hold another live racing day until Jan. 19.

NEW ORLEANS - When Spanish Empire joined Steve Asmussen's stable last summer, Asmussen believed he was getting a horse to run at Louisiana Downs. Instead, he might have a horse for the New Orleans Handicap.

Spanish Empire turned in a visually impressive performance winning the $60,000 Louisiana Handicap over Tenpins last Friday, and the mathematicians agreed. Spanish Empire received a 109 Beyer Speed Figure for winning the Louisiana, and as assistant trainer Scott Blasi walked into Asmussen's barn office Tuesday morning, he cautioned Asmussen, "Don't run him back too fast."

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. - Five wintry weeks had passed since the highest caliber of racing had been conducted in the Eastern sector of the United States. So when Gulfstream Park launched its 2004 meet Saturday, ending the proverbial drought that began when Churchill Downs closed its fall meet and Aqueduct's best horses migrated south, its opening could not have come soon enough for many people.

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. - Read the Footnotes took his first small steps as a 3-year-old on the road to what trainer Rick Violette hopes will eventually become a journey to the Kentucky Derby when he breezed an easy three furlongs in 37.60 seconds at Palm Meadows on Sunday morning.

With regular exercise rider Morna McDowall aboard, Read the Footnotes broke off at the quarter pole and cruised around to the seven-eighths pole before galloping out a half-mile around the turn in 50. It was his first recorded work since he won the Grade 2 Remsen by 3 3/4 lengths Nov. 29.