JAMAICA, N.Y. - Eleven weeks after being eased against some of the best fillies and mares in the country, * will return to the races Saturday against decidedly softer competition in the $100,000, Grade 3 Ladies Handicap at Aqueduct.

Before being eased in the Grade 1 Beldame against Exogenous, Flute, and Spain, Irving's Baby was enjoying a solid 4-year-old season, with five stakes wins and a respectable third-place finish in the Grade 1 Personal Ensign Handicap at Saratoga. Her performance in the Beldame could be attributed to fatigue from a grueling campaign.

For Harvey Vanier, the winter routine has pretty much been the same for as long as anyone can remember: Take the best horses to Florida and leave the rest behind in Illinois.

Invariably, many of the horses left behind by Vanier, who has been training since 1942, are homebreds or others without the pedigree or ability to compete against some of North America's best at Gulfstream Park. While Vanier spends most of the winter in Florida, his longtime assistant, Brian Williamson, stays home in Chicago, working quietly behind the scenes at Hawthorne in Stickney, Ill.

NEW ORLEANS - Triple Crown participant * breezed three furlongs at Fair Grounds last Saturday, the colt's first work since returning to training after surgery to remove a bone chip in his leg. Dollar Bill's breeze was a slow one, about 38 seconds, but was merely designed to serve as a stepping-stone for more intense works.

MIAMI - Castlebrook breezed an easy half-mile in 49.60 seconds here on Wednesday. Trainer Bill Kaplan pronounced her fit and ready to accept her highweight assignment of 118 pounds for Saturday's $100,000 Stage Door Betty Handicap.

NEW ORLEANS - It was quiet at Fair Grounds on Monday, one of the slow days of the racing week. Owner Merwyn Sher was in town from St. Louis to witness a nerve-racking stunt, the class-dropping free fall trainer Tom Amoss would perform with Causeimadoll, a horse owned by Sher's family partnership, Tom Boy Stable.

NEW ORLEANS - The Tom Amoss barn has been hot enough with stakes horses in stakes races. Imagine how the trainer will do with a stakes horse in an allowance race.

Four days after Amoss swept a pair of weekend stakes at Fair Grounds, *, a graded stakes-winning sprinter this season, pops up in the Thursday feature here.

There are no sprint stakes for older fillies and mares at this meet until Feb. 9, so Fair Grounds has carded a $40,000, six-furlong allowance with conditions suitable to stakes-quality fillies and mares - nonwinners of two races since Oct. 20.

JAMAICA, N.Y. - Thursday's six-furlong $54,000 classified allowance at Aqueduct could easily pass for a Grade 3 stakes, and several of these sprinters, notably Fickle Fanny, Poivre, and Celtic Melody, are returning from layoffs and look to be prepping for upcoming handicaps such as the Interborough and/or the Correction. The returnees will need to have their running shoes on due to the presence of Major Wager and Case of the Blues, who are currently sharp as tacks.

As part of a redevelopment plan for the Del Mar Fairgrounds, the property owner has recommended that the racetrack be given a $62.9 million face-lift, according to a report in The San Diego Daily Transcript.

The owner, the 22nd Agricultural Association, released a report on Monday that recommended the entire 350-acre fairgrounds property receive $245 million in improvements. But the report, a wish list of sorts, identifies only $7 million in capital improvement funds that are available for the renovations.

Delta Downs in Vinton, La., had its gaming license reinstated last Friday after the track's new owner, Boyd Gaming, paid former owner Shawn Scott an additional $5.1 million to eliminate future payments due him that could have been interpreted to be based on the performance of the track's yet-to-be-opened slots casino.

INGLEWOOD, Calif. - The autumn meeting at Hollywood Park concluded on Monday with an increase in attendance and all-sources handle, but a drop in ontrack handle.

The 31-day meeting drew an average crowd of 7,214, a gain of 5 percent. The overall daily average handle of $9,383,251 was an increase of 3 percent from 2000, but the ontrack average fell by 1 percent to $1,674,185. At satellite locations in California, handle grew by 4 percent to $3,739,541.

The overall handle was the second-highest for an autumn meeting that did not include a Breeders' Cup.