When Golden Gate Fields unveiled plans for its Gold Rush Weekend, featuring eight stakes this weekend, it knew it was taking a big gamble.

By putting six stakes races, including the $250,000 Grade 3 San Francisco Mile, all on one day this Saturday instead of spreading them over the calendar, it weighed the option of one big day versus losing opportunities to highlight six separate days with stakes.

The track has lucked out in three ways even before entries were drawn this week.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Serengeti Empress passed two important tests Tuesday morning at Churchill Downs, working a sharp five furlongs in 58.09, then scoping cleanly, once returning to the barn, according to her trainer, Tom Amoss. As a result, she will now definitely be pointed for the Kentucky Oaks on May 3.

Racing continues in Ohio as Belterra Park in Cincinnati opens its live racing meet Friday and Thistledown in North Randall opens Monday. Belterra will get a running start to its season over the first two weekends of the meet, which both include stakes, with next weekend’s activity bolstered by a celebration of the Run for the Roses in neighboring Kentucky. The track continues through the summer with a stakes slate that showcases the Buckeye State’s breeding program.

Meanwhile, Thistledown will prepare to host graded stakes action and one of Ohio’s richest racing programs in June.

ETOBICOKE, Ontario – Trainer Kevin Attard said Shakopee Town exited her victory in Saturday’s Grade 3 Whimsical Stakes at Woodbine nicely and will be pointed to the Grade 3, $125,000 Hendrie Stakes over 6 1/2 furlongs here June 9.

A homebred owned by Minnesotans Al and Bill Ulwelling, Shakopee Town got a career-high 89 Beyer Speed Figure in the six-furlong Whimsical, which she won comfortably in her first non-dirt start, a few weeks after shipping in from Louisiana.

Anothertwistafate, currently 23rd on the points list for the Kentucky Derby on May 4, will bypass the race and point for the Preakness Stakes, the second leg of the Triple Crown, on May 18 at Pimlico, trainer Blaine Wright said Tuesday.

Anothertwistafate would have needed three defections from those above him on the list by Tuesday to make the 20-horse field for the Derby. Even if he hadn't made the top 20, he could have been entered as an also-eligible, as a maximum of four horses can be also-eligibles at entry time.

Scott Lake became the sixth trainer in Thoroughbred history to win 6,000 races Monday when the Pennsylvania-bred 3-year-old filly I’m the Talent won her debut in the fifth race at Parx Racing.

The other members of the 6,000 club are the late Dale Baird (9,445 wins), Steve Asmussen (8,404), Jerry Hollendorfer (7,596), the late Jack Van Berg (6,523), and King Leatherbury (6,501).

Tyler Baze, who has enjoyed a lucrative career riding primarily in Southern California, intends to ride at Churchill through the end of the spring meet (June 29) and will begin a couple of days early when riding Ready Orb Not in the first race Thursday at Keeneland.

Baze, 36, has more than 2,600 wins and $117 million in mount earnings in a career dating to 1999. He will be represented by Joe Santos, the son of retired Hall of Fame jockey Jose Santos.

Brown filly turns heads

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Conditions were perfect at Churchill Downs on Monday morning, both weather- and track-wise, a combination that kept the local clockers extremely busy from the time training hours began at 5:15 a.m. right up to the closing bell. The five-hour session included the specially designated 15-minute window for Derby/Oaks training that begins daily at 7:30 a.m.

Hotshot Anna, North America’s leading older-filly synthetic-surface sprinter of 2018, has recovered from a freak accident this winter at Fair Grounds and is in steady training again for Hugh Robertson.

Hotshot Anna was being bathed outside Robertson’s barn when a wind gust blew something that startled the mare, causing her to rear and topple backward, fracturing her withers. The injury, Robertson said from the start, never appeared to cause Hotshot Anna significant discomfort but she needed several months of rest for the fracture to heal, which it has.

The Arkansas Derby that Omaha Beach won April 13 at Oaklawn was just the third time the race was run on a sloppy track since Rampage captured it in 1986, according to the track’s media guide. Gary Thomas, who trained Rampage, recalled the wet weather conditions from that afternoon after attending this year’s Arkansas Derby in which the rain was constant.

“It was worse than this year’s,” Thomas said. “It was raining sideways. There were about 72,000 people there.”

Balto Star won the Arkansas Derby over a sloppy track in 2001. Smarty Jones won on a muddy track in 2004.