OZONE PARK, N.Y. - Though he has won 15 of 27 starts, including 11 stakes, Docent has never won a graded event. His best opportunity to do that is Tuesday when he heads an eight-horse field in the Grade 3, $100,000 Stuyvesant at Aqueduct.

Docent, a 5-year-old gelded son of Waquoit, finished third in the Stuyvesant last year and second in the Grade 3 Queens County over Aqueduct's inner track. This year, Docent has won 6 of 8 starts and is coming off a nose victory in the Maryland Million Classic, a race he has won three consecutive years.

ALBANY, Calif. - Sonoma State University, a Division II school known by sports fans as the alma mater of Dallas Cowboys all-pro offensive lineman Larry Allen, is turning to horse racing to save its athletic program.

After being informed by the NCAA that the school needs to generate $250,000 for athletic scholarships or face being demoted to Division III, which would mean the school could not award scholarships, Sonoma State assistant athletic director Russ Gardiner came up with a unique idea to raise money.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. - Sixty Seconds and Mariensky give trainer Christophe Clement a powerful one-two punch in Saturday's Grade 2, $150,000 Long Island Handicap, New York's final turf stakes of the year for fillies and mares.

Sixty Seconds, a Group 1 winner in Australia, is 2 for 2 in this country, including a head victory in the Grade 3 Glens Falls Handicap at Saratoga on Aug. 25. The Long Island will be the first start for Sixty Seconds in nearly three months.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. - In Sunday's $100,000 Cormorant Stakes at Aqueduct, Haggs Castle meets one of the weakest fields he has faced since winning last year's Cormorant by 2 3/4 lengths.

Haggs Castle, who has lost eight consecutive starts since last year's Cormorant, and Quantum Merit are the standouts among eight males entered in the main body of the mile turf race, which is for the progeny of New York stallions. Trial Prep, Beau Tie, Levendis, and Thanasi are entered main-track only.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. - The forecast through Sunday in New York was for clear skies, which may disappoint many of the trainers who entered horses for Sunday's $100,000 Perfect Arc, one of four stakes races for New York-sired horses on the program.

Among the eight fillies or mares entered in the one-mile turf race, only two can be considered true grass specialists. The rest, including two horses entered only if the race comes off the turf, have tried the grass intermittently if at all, and with less than spectacular results.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. - Pa Pa Da, coming off a runner-up finish in the Sleepy Hollow on New York Showcase Day, and West Virginia, a runaway winner of a maiden race, are the headline names in Sunday's $125,000 Great White Way at Aqueduct.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - The richest race on any given program at Churchill Downs normally is carded late in the day, but when the scheduled feature attracted just six fillies and mares, the race became the fourth of 10 so that more attractive betting races could be slotted for the prime spots.

ETOBICOKE, Ontario - Dream About and Silver Bird, who dueled each other into submission on the front end in the 1 1/16-mile Princess Elizabeth Stakes, will clash again at seven furlongs in Sunday's $136,875 Glorious Song Stakes at Woodbine.

Dream About was the leader of the local 2-year-old filly division after her decisive triumph Sept. 20 in the Grade 2 Mazarine Breeders' Cup Stakes. But she could manage only a distant fourth-place finish in the Oct. 12 Princess Elizabeth, which was won by My Vintage Port in a slow final time of 1:48.80.

ARCADIA, Calif. - Trainer Richard Mandella enters the Sunday card at Santa Anita with an incomplete resume. Oh sure, Mandella won four Breeders' Cup races two weeks ago, and entered the Hall of Fame in 2001.

But in an oversight to a training career that spans nearly 30 years, Mandella has never won the Avigaition Stakes, a 1 1/8-mile turf race for fillies and mares that is the closing-day feature at Oak Tree. With a $70,000 purse, the race pales compared to the $4.5 million that Mandella runners earned on Breeders' Cup Day.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Thirteen of the jockeys who wore a Jockeys' Guild patch on their pants during the Kentucky Derby last May have filed a lawsuit requesting that a stewards' ruling against them be overturned and that the Kentucky Racing Commission regulation that governs advertising on jockeys' clothing be declared an unconstitutional implementation of the state's regulatory powers.