HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – Knock Em Flat is entered in the Grade 1, $1 million Arkansas Derby at Oaklawn Park on Saturday, but will instead run on the undercard in the $100,000 Northern Spur, said his trainer, Donnie Von Hemel. The Northern Spur is one of four stakes worth a cumulative $1.8 million on the final card of the meet. The program also includes the Oaklawn Handicap and the Instant Racing.

LEXINGTON, Ky. – The Blue Grass Stakes has mimicked the Kentucky Derby in recent years in at least one notable respect: surprises are the norm.

No favorite has won the Blue Grass since 2003, and with the 90th running of the Keeneland showcase on tap for Saturday, a jam-packed gate of 3-year-olds replete with unknown variables portends more of the same.

HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – Tapiture has established himself as the top 3-year-old at Oaklawn Park, but when he runs Saturday in the meet’s richest offering, the Grade 1, $1 million Arkansas Derby, he will have to stave off a number of points-hungry newcomers. Bayern, Commissioner, Conquest Titan, and Danza have shipped to town to chase the race’s 170 Kentucky Derby preference points, to be divided on a scale of 100-40-20-10.

Saturday marks the final round of major Kentucky Derby preps, with Keeneland and Oaklawn Park hosting the main events. Oaklawn’s Grade 1, $1 million Arkansas Derby is the richest race of the day, and the Grade 2, $500,000 Oaklawn Handicap, which lured Will Take Charge, is the primary supporting feature. The Grade 1, $750,000 Blue Grass tops a Keeneland card that includes four other graded stakes. Two of them, the Jenny Wiley and the Madison, are Grade 1, $300,000 races.

Blue Grass Stakes

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Trainer Kiaran McLaughlin has been keeping his eyes firmly affixed on the Kentucky Derby qualifying point standings ever since his Cairo Prince finished fourth in the $1 million Florida Derby. As a result of that race, Cairo Prince’s Kentucky Derby status is precarious heading into the two final two major Derby preps Saturday, the Blue Grass Stakes and Arkansas Derby.

HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – Ride On Curlin has contested the pace in each of his last two starts, and trainer Billy Gowan hopes to change tactics Saturday, when the horse runs from post 4 in the Grade 1, $1 million Arkansas Derby at Oaklawn Park. Ride On Curlin was part of a nine-horse field drawn Wednesday for the 1 1/8-mile race, with Knock Em Flat, in post 2, also entered in an undercard stakes, the $100,000 Northern Spur.

When the Blue Grass Stakes is run at Keeneland on Saturday, it is unlikely to produce the next Kentucky Derby winner. Though it was once the most important 3-year-old prep race, it became irrelevant after Keeneland replaced its dirt track with a synthetic surface. None of the seven horses who captured the Blue Grass on Polytrack proceeded to win on Churchill Downs’s dirt; most ran dismally.

Greg Gilchrist won’t be taking any credit for any part of the California Chrome fairy tale. The colt, now perched at the threshold of Kentucky Derby favoritism, has cleanly divorced himself from all traditional moorings to be what anthropologists might call sui generis, which is racetrack Latin for “what a freak.”

And yet if Gilchrist, acting on behalf of Scott Sherwood’s Blinkers On Racing Stable partnership, had not gone to $30,000 to buy a filly by Not for Love at the second session of the Midlantic sale of 2-year-olds in training in May of 2008  . . .

LEXINGTON, Ky. – Dale Romans hangs around enough horseplayers to know the nuances of the tote board, which is one reason the veteran trainer will be running Medal Count back on just seven days’ rest in the Grade 1 Blue Grass Stakes on Saturday.

“He’s the second choice,” said Romans, referring to a morning line that lists Medal Count at 9-2, behind only Bobby’s Kitten (3-1) on the Keeneland program. “That’s enough right there to run.”

Albano, who was placed fourth in the Louisiana Derby in his most recent start, will bypass the May 3 Kentucky Derby, according to his owner and breeder, Brereton C. Jones.