ARCADIA, Calif. – Trainer Doug O’Neill will be dividing up his 3-year-olds among several races locally and out of town in the upcoming weeks, with the newly acquired Iliad remaining home while So Conflated and the filly Shane’s Girlfriend will head to Fair Grounds.

Though the three stakes horses I am eager to bet on Saturday at Gulfstream Park quite possibly aren’t the best horses in their races, they do seem to be the runners best played given the circumstances.

All three – Gunnevera in the Holy Bull, Compelled in the Sweetest Chant, and Kitten’s Cat in the Kitten’s Joy – seem probable to start as mild overlays, and the race conditions favor them too. Let’s take a look at the races, beginning with the richest stakes of the day, the Grade 2, $350,000 Holy Bull.

Holy Bull

ARCADIA, Calif. – The understudy among the 3-year-olds trained by John Shirreffs gets top billing on Saturday, as Royal Mo seeks to join stablemate Gormley as a viable Kentucky Derby candidate when he takes on four rivals in the Grade 3, $150,000 Robert B. Lewis Stakes at Santa Anita.

Classic Empire, the winner of the 2016 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile and last year’s 2-year-old male champion, was assigned 126 pounds to top the annual Experimental Free Handicap, a ranking of the top juveniles to run in North America last year.

Classic Empire, by Pioneerof the Nile, was rated one pound higher than Not This Time, the second-place finisher in the Juvenile who was retired last year after sustaining a soft-tissue injury. Oscar Performance, the first-place finisher in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf, was assigned 123 pounds.

Trainer Joe Sharp and owner Brad Grady’s pair of talented 3-year-olds, Girvin and Cool Arrow, are entered in the $50,000 Keith Gee Memorial, a one-mile grass race on the Saturday card at Fair Grounds.

Both horses had been stuck at the Evangeline Downs training center in Lafayette, La., unable to race at Fair Grounds because of the equine herpesvirus event that had put Fair Grounds under quarantine until Jan. 21.

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Classic Empire will be an odds-on choice when the Gulfstream Park trail to the Kentucky Derby starts Saturday with the Grade 2, $350,000 Holy Bull Stakes. And he should be, considering that the colt is the reigning divisional champion and was the favored individual betting interest in the first two pools of the Kentucky Derby Future Wager.

But if Classic Empire somehow stubs his toe in the Holy Bull, Irish War Cry or Gunnevera could be there to pull an upset in the 1 1/16-mile race.

The mutuel field, the 24th or “all others” option, closed Sunday as the 5-2 favorite over divisional champion Classic Empire (5-1) in Pool 2 of the 2017 Kentucky Derby Future Wager. The pool opened Friday at noon Eastern and ran through 6 p.m. Sunday.

Total handle for Pool 2 was $330,042, down 25 percent from the corresponding pool in 2016. Win handle was $227,880 and exacta handle was $102,162.

Bourbon Empire on Friday was announced as an early nominee to the Triple Crown, bringing to 419 the number of nominees at this stage of the process.

There were 418 3-year-olds announced as early nominees on Tuesday. Bourbon Empire's omission then, and addition on Friday, was because of a "clerical error," according to a press release from Churchill Downs.

Bourbon Empire has won once in two starts. He is entered in the Gander Stakes for New York-breds on Saturday at Aqueduct.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Trainer Todd Pletcher is expected to send out a trio of runners against Jerome Stakes winner El Areeb in next Saturday’s Grade 3, $250,000 Withers Stakes at Aqueduct.

Pletcher’s horses Bonus Points and Win With Pride, who finished second and fourth in the Jerome, will try El Areeb again. They will be joined by Fillet of Sole, a colt coming off a maiden victory at Parx in November.

With divisional champion Classic Empire heading the prospective lineup, a field of seven or eight is forming for the first major 3-year-old event of the Gulfstream championship meet, the Grade 2, $350,000 Holy Bull Stakes next Saturday.

Classic Empire was scheduled to have his final prerace breeze this weekend at his Palm Meadows base, according to trainer Mark Casse.

“So far, everything’s going to plan,” Casse said Friday. “We’re in good shape.”