ELMONT, N.Y. – Todd Pletcher knows the Grade 1 Metropolitan Handicap is going to be “a nasty race,” but in Coal Front, he feels he has a horse who can get down and dirty with the best of them.

On Friday, Coal Front worked a strong five furlongs in 1:00.65 over the Belmont Park training track, galloping out six furlongs in 1:14.05, seven furlongs in 1:27.15, and completing a mile in 1:41.12 under jockey Jose Ortiz.

“That’s kind of the way he’s trained all along. He seems to get into a comfortable rhythm and keeps going,” Pletcher said.

The Downs at Albuquerque has announced its stakes schedule for the meet that opens June 28, and the lineup includes the Bank of America Challenge Championships. The traveling series of major stakes for Quarter Horses will be run Oct. 26. It will be the first time Albuquerque has hosted the races.

Albuquerque will offer 34 stakes during its meet for Thoroughbreds and Quarter Horses. Purses for those races are worth $3.6 million.

Remington Park has set the dates for its richest Thoroughbred races, the Oklahoma Derby and Springboard Mile, while releasing its stakes schedule. Each race is worth $400,000. The Grade 3 Oklahoma Derby will be run Sept. 29. The Springboard Mile, a points race for the Kentucky Derby, is set for Dec. 15.

Remington opens its 67-date Thoroughbred season Aug. 23. The meet runs through Dec. 15. There will be 32 stakes worth a cumulative $3.7 million.

ELMONT, N.Y. – Trainer Bob Baffert is taking a pass on this year’s Belmont Stakes.

Baffert, who has won two of the last four Belmonts – completing Triple Crowns with American Pharoah in 2015 and Justify in 2018 – confirmed Friday that Game Winner, last year’s 2-year-old champion male who finished fifth in the Kentucky Derby, would not run in the Belmont on June 8. Baffert said he was not pointing any other horse to the last leg of the Triple Crown.

Mr Money Bags, a multiple stakes winner who had an equipment issue during the Grade 3 Pat Day Mile at Churchill Downs, is to make his next start at Lone Star Park. Trainer Mike Neatherlin said the horse is being pointed to the $65,000 Stymie division of the Texas Stallion Stakes on June 1. The race for 3-year-olds will be run at a mile.

Earlier this year, Mr Money Bags won a six-furlong division of the Texas Stallion Stakes by 11 1/2 lengths at Sam Houston. One start later, he romped by seven lengths in the track’s $50,000 Groovy, earning a shot at the Pat Day Mile.

Texas Belle brings a hot streak into the $100,000 Lone Star Park Turf Stakes on Monday. She will be looking for her fourth consecutive win when she runs in the new one-mile race for fillies and mares that drew a field of nine, including multiple stakes winner Adore and Kentucky invader Sensitive.

ARCADIA, Calif. – Gray Magician, last of 19 in the Kentucky Derby on May 4, and Galilean, fifth in the Grade 1 Arkansas Derby on April 13, will return to training in coming weeks.

Gray Magician, who was second in the Group 2 United Arab Emirates Derby in Dubai on March 30, was recently flown from Kentucky to trainer Peter Miller’s California base at the San Luis Rey Downs training center. Miller said Thursday there are no specific race plans for Gray Magician, but that the Grade 3 Indiana Derby at Indiana Grand is under consideration.

ARCADIA, Calif. – Kyle Frey, the champion apprentice jockey of 2011, is nearing a return to riding after undergoing knee surgery last September.

Frey, 27, suffered a torn anterior cruciate ligament when he was unseated in a post parade at Del Mar last July. In the last week, Frey has resumed exercising horses at Santa Anita. He has not set a time for his return.

“I’ve been around for about a week,” he said Thursday morning. “I’m doing everything to get back sooner rather than later.

“I’m taking it day by day. I feel good.”

ARCADIA, Calif. – A second in the Grade 2 Mathis Brothers Mile in December and a troubled third in the Grade 1 Frank Kilroe Mile on March 30 has left Desert Stone close to winning a graded stakes.

One of these days, trainer Richard Baltas thinks, the promising 4-year-old colt is going to deliver.

“If he wins one of these, it will be a big deal,” Baltas said.

Record purses will be offered at the 29-day summer meet at Ellis Park in western Kentucky, where officials are projecting per-day payouts of about $330,000. That figure is more than double the $155,000 average paid out in 2015.

The stakes schedule remains virtually the same, with one addition to Kentucky Downs Preview Day on Aug. 4. In all, nine stakes worth at least $100,000 are on the schedule, led by the annual meet highlight, the Grade 3, $125,000 Groupie Doll on Aug. 11.