HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – The majority of the horses who competed in Sunday’s Clasico Internacional del Caribe program will be making their way back home this week. But two of the stars of the show, Kukulkan and his stablemate Letruska, will be traveling no farther than up the turnpike to Palm Meadows with trainer Fausto Gutierrez, who plans to run both here again during the Championship meet.

CYPRESS, Calif. – Mirth, the winner of the Grade 1 Rodeo Drive Stakes on turf at Santa Anita in September, was withdrawn from Sunday’s Grade 3 Bayakoa Stakes at Los Alamitos because of a rain-soaked main track, trainer Phil D’Amato said.

Mirth will be pointed for the Grade 3 Robert Frankel Stakes, a $100,000 race for fillies and mares at 1 1/8 miles on turf at Santa Anita on Dec. 28.

Mirth, who was sixth in the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Turf at Santa Anita on Nov. 2, has not run on dirt since the summer of 2017 at Delaware Park prior to joining D’Amato’s stable.

CYPRESS, Calif. – Donna Veloce, second in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies last month and in Saturday’s Grade 1 Starlet Stakes at Los Alamitos, will be given a brief rest in advance of a late winter and spring campaign.

Trainer Simon Callaghan said on Sunday he does not plan to start Donna Veloce until March and hopes to give the filly two starts before the Kentucky Oaks at Churchill Downs on May 1.

“She came out of it really good,” Callaghan said on Sunday. “She jogged great this morning. We’ll give her some time and let her decompress and bring her back in March.”

CYPRESS, Calif. – Joe Talamo moved within one victory of the 2,000th win of his career on Sunday at Los Alamitos when Tiz Wonderfully won the sixth race.

The achievement has been on Talamo’s minds the past few months, along with a recent drought of wins. Tiz Wonderfully was Talamo’s first winner since Nov. 10 at Del Mar.

“You know how that is,” Talamo said at the end of Sunday’s program. “It will come when it gets here.

“The horses are running good. They’re getting good trips.”

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – After nearly 25 years as a racing official, P.J. Campo is now working for the first time as a jockey’s agent, booking mounts for journeyman rider Eric Cancel.

The two have gotten off to a terrific start.

Cancel won six races from 19 mounts last week and overall is 8 for 32 since Campo took his book two weeks ago. One of Cancel’s two wins Saturday came aboard Saratoga Treasure in the $125,000 Autumn Days Stakes.

On an otherwise dim, swampy Thursday card, the featured eighth race at Fair Grounds comes like a sudden clearing breaking through a dark bayou.

Short fields and low-level runners populate most of this program, but the Thursday feature is long on entrants and strong for the class, a second-level allowance also open to $40,000 claimers and carded at about 5 1/2 furlongs on grass. There are nine horses in the main body of the race, one also-eligible, and two entered main track only.

ETOBICOKE, Ontario – As the 2019 Woodbine meet heads into its final week, focus will soon turn towards voting for the year-end Sovereign Awards. This year’s vote for Canadian Horse of the Year could go a few different directions, with three horses likely to take most of the consideration.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – When Lake Avenue rolled to a four-length victory in Saturday’s Grade 2, $200,000 Demoiselle Stakes, it was the seventh victory with a 2-year-old at the Aqueduct meet for Hall of Fame trainer Bill Mott.

While Mott still has to decipher just how good some of those 2-year-olds are, he knows he has a legitimate Kentucky Oaks contender in Lake Avenue, who backed up her 12 1/4-length maiden score earlier this meet with a front-running victory in the Demoiselle.

Santa Anita will conduct a renovation of its main track after training hours on Wednesday, a process that will be completed within a day and result in a two-day break in timed workouts, track consultant Dennis Moore said on Sunday.

The renovation will be completed slightly less than two weeks prior to the start of the winter-spring meeting on Dec. 26 and is likely to result in a slightly quicker surface, Moore said.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Adam Wachtel grew up coming to Aqueduct in the 1980s and 90s when his father Ed owned horses, including Smokin Mel, who won the 1997 Gotham Stakes and finished third in the Wood Memorial.

The younger Wachtel has owned horses himself now for quite a while and on Saturday he enjoyed a terrific afternoon at Aqueduct, winning the Grade 2 Remsen for 2-year-olds with Shotski and the Grade 3 Go for Wand for fillies and mares with Spiced Perfection.