SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - Two years ago, everyone from the racing secretary to the betting public expected Praise the Prince to win the Grade 1 New York Turf Writers Cup. But the 160-pound weight assignment proved too much as Praise the Prince checked in third as the 2-5 favorite.

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - Bobby Frankel has lost 17 consecutive races at Saratoga and went winless in six Grade 1 races over the weekend from coast to coast. Now, for the bad news.

Milwaukee Brew and Sea of Showers, two of Frankel's bevy of graded stakes winners, came out of their respective weekend races with injuries and are expected to be retired. Milwaukee Brew has been removed from the Classic field for this weekend's Breeders' Cup Future Wager, reducing the number of individual betting interests to 22 plus the field.

ETOBICOKE, Ontario - Tamara, who was scratched from last Sunday’s Ontario Colleen Handicap, should be favored in Thursday’s seventh race at Woodbine, a six-furlong turf allowance for fillies and mares.

Tamara graduated second-time out on the main track May 19, and subsequently ran third behind classy Saint Bernadette in allowance company.

Trainer David Bell tried Tamara on the grass June 29, in the 6 1/2-furlong Ontario Damsel Stakes, in which she rallied wide to finish just a length behind the winner in third.

DEL MAR, Calif. - Taste of Paradise was dismissed at 37-1 when he won the San Diego Handicap earlier this month, but he will not be anywhere near that price when he starts in Monday's Grade 2, $250,000 Del Mar Breeders' Cup Handicap, the highlight of the Labor Day program at Del Mar.

Taste of Paradise has worked swiftly since that race, including a six-furlong drill in 1:10.80 on Tuesday morning. He has never finished out of the money in three starts at Del Mar.

DEL MAR, Calif. - Through the first five weeks of the Del Mar meet, Jeff Mullins has run half as many horses as Bob Baffert, but has won at such a high rate that he has been able to stay within hailing distance of Del Mar’s perennial training champ.

Mullins has won with 11 of 37 starters, a strike rate of 30 percent. He trails Baffert - who has been this track’s leading trainer for six straight seasons - by just four wins heading into the final 13 days of the season.

OCEANPORT, N.J. - At first glance, the Grade 3, $100,000 Sorority Stakes for 2-year-old fillies Saturday at Monmouth Park looks like an ambitious spot for Stand on Top.

She has made one start, a winning effort at Saratoga against New York-breds.

“She ran a very good race up there,” said trainer Terri Pompay. “She dug in all the way down the stretch. I don’t care if it was New York-bred or open. She ran a very good race.”

Pompay has a lot of faith in the filly and does not view the Sorority as an unattainable reach.

CHICAGO - Six furlongs is the standard operating distance of American horse racing. Double it, and you reach a land rarely traveled by Thoroughbreds in this age.

But this is the place Arlington is headed Thursday, when first-level allowance horses run a mile and a half on turf, the highlight of a nine-race program here.

Tom “Bomber” Doutrich has been named racing secretary for the Bay Meadows meeting which begins Friday.

Doutrich, who had been the agent for jockeys Ron Warren Jr. and Francisco Duran, will replace Greg Brent in what Bay Meadows President F. Jack Liebau termed a “reshuffling.”

The racing at Louisiana Downs this week will arguably be the strongest of the current meet. There are two overnight handicaps planned, as well as three stakes races and an allowance that could pass as one.

On Thursday, in the first race, stakes winners Remington Rock, Lights on Broadway, and Rebridled meet highweight King Zonic in a $32,000 overnight handicap named The Big Earl.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Classic Fool stunned most everyone but his trainer when he upset a couple of graded-stakes-placed horses in last Saturday's Governor's Handicap at the California State Fair.

Classic Fool, who paid $84.80, was 0 for 19 with only two seconds and two thirds coming into the race, but trainer T.J. Stewart, admittedly in the minority, believed the 4-year-old gelding had a chance to finish on the board in the race.

"I didn't really consider him a maiden," Stewart said. "He's a good horse. He should have won before, but he's been a bad-luck horse."