Bolstered by casino revenues, the lucrative 50-night Delta Downs Quarter Horse season opens Friday with six trials to the Lassie Futurity for 2-year-old fillies.

Competing in the trials are recent winners Shaken Cash, Outre Pie, and Landrys Honor.

The meet runs on a Thursday through Sunday schedule, except for Easter Sunday, April 20. First post time is 6:45 p.m.

The meet's two richest races are the $100,000-added Delta Downs Derby on May 25 and the $100,000-added Lee Berwick Futurity on closing day, June 29. Each of those races is for Louisiana-breds.

GRAND ISLAND, Neb. - Perry Compton's dominance of the rider standings at Fonner Park continued last weekend when he put together a pair of four-win days, the eighth time he has accomplished the feat this meet.

Ronney Brown finished the three-month winter meet, which concluded March 29, as the dominant trainer at Charles Town with 35 wins in 174 starts.

Jeff Runco, after a slow start, finished second with 18 wins, three ahead of Bruce Kravets. Maryland-based trainer Dale Capuano saddled 50 fewer horses than Kravets, but finished only one win behind him, 15-14, thanks to going 14 for 35 (40 percent) with the runners he shipped to West Virginia.

The top percentage trainers were Amy Albright (10 for 17, 59 percent) and Busanda Armstrong (5 for 10, 50 percent).

LAFAYETTE, La. - Times are a changing at Evangeline Downs, which opens its 87-day season Friday night.

Most of the changes are readily noticeable. They include a renovated clubhouse, an expanded stakes schedule, new membership in the National Thoroughbred Racing Association, an aggressive promotional and marketing campaign, and a new track announcer, Sean Beirne. Less obvious, but far more important, is what is happening 15 miles north on Interstate 49.

ETOBICOKE, Ontario - Trainer Chantal Paquette has kept a low profile since taking out her trainer's license here in the fall of 1999.

But now Paquette, a 28-year-old native of Montreal, finds herself in the early glare of the Queen's Plate spotlight after recording her first career stakes victory.

Paquette, who trains four horses here, sent out Majestic Wisdom to edge the heavily favored Wando here in last Sunday's six-furlong Achievement.

ETOBICOKE, Ontario - Trainer Vito Armata had a sensational year in 2002, when he captured the Queen's Plate with longshot T J's Lucky Moon, and routinely improved on the many runners he claimed.

Surprisingly, Armata failed to garner enough votes to make him a Sovereign Award finalist for top trainer in 2002. He finished behind such high-profile trainers as Mark Casse, Mark Frostad and Roger Attfield, who won the award.

PORTLAND, Ore. - There is no place like home for Lethal Grande, who made a triumphant return to Portland Meadows in Sunday's six-furlong Governor's Speed Handicap.

Lethal Grande, a 4-year-old son of Corslew, earned champion Oregon-bred juvenile status with a pair of stakes wins here in 2001, but he had since raced exclusively in California. Though he won two races at Bay Meadows, his recent form had begun to tail off, and, after claiming him for $25,000 in January, new owner Mike Pollowitz sent him here in hopes that a return home would serve as a tonic.

CALGARY, Alberta - Viva Ruckus, winner of 10 races on this circuit the past two years, runs here on Friday, opening night of the 2003 Alberta Thoroughbred racing season.

Horsemen will reap an 8 percent increase in overnight purses this year, bolstered by the track's share of slot machine revenue.

Racing at the 43-day meeting at this downtown Calgary course will be conducted four days a week, with post time at 6 p.m. Wednesdays and Fridays and on 1 p.m. on the weekends.

Atswhatimtalknbout leads a field of 10 horses entered for Saturday's 66th running of the $750,000 Santa Anita Derby. Atswhatimtalknbout, the runner-up finisher in the Grade 2 San Felipe, drew post 6 is listed as the 9-5 favorite under jockey David Flores in the Southern California's final prep race for the Kentucky Derby.

ARCADIA, Calif. - Woe is he. In the two months since Domestic Dispute won the Santa Catalina Stakes, trainer Bob Baffert has had a rough go.

Domestic Dispute lost as the favorite in the San Felipe Stakes. Kafwain was second in the Louisiana Derby, and was later disqualified for having too much Clenbuterol in his system. Baffert had to send Vindication, his champion 2-year-old colt, to the farm with a suspensory injury, knocking him off the Kentucky Derby trail. And then last weekend, neither Apalachian Thunder nor Spensive could win the WinStar Derby.