ETOBICOKE, Ontario – Excaper stamped himself as a bona-fide turf horse as a 2-year-old, finishing second in both the Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf at Churchill Downs and the Grade 3 Summer Stakes at Woodbine. But while he has gone on to place in four more turf stakes, the 4-year-old Excaper is still looking for his first stakes win after 12 career starts.

On Sunday, Excaper could be poised to break through in the Play the King, a seven-furlong turf stakes that offers Grade 2 status and a purse of $200,000.

Jax and Jill wasn't quite good enough to beat the older multiple stakes winner Down Town Allen earlier this month. But she looks formidable returning to face fellow West Virginia-bred 3-year-old fillies in Saturday night's $50,000 Sylvia Bishop Memorial Stakes at Charles Town.

Jax and Jill, trained by Scott Lake for Robert Cole Jr., led until the final furlong of the Sadie Hawkins on Aug. 10 and wound up beaten just a length by Down Town Allen, whose 18 career victories include seven stakes at Charles Town.

It’s all about babies at Calder Race Course on Saturday, when the Miami track puts on its 11th annual Juvenile Showcase. Every single one of the afternoon’s 10 races is for 2-year-olds, with six of them stakes. They include two divisions of the second leg of the Florida Stallion Stakes, as well as a pair of one-mile races, the $75,000 Seacliff and the $75,000 Lindsay Frolic.

The 1 1/8-mile distance of Saturday night’s $75,000 DeBartolo Memorial Handicap at Remington Park has made the turf race an attractive spot for an eclectic mix of horses. Daddy Nose Best is a multiple Grade  3 winner at the trip. She’s All In faces males off a runner-up finish to champion Royal Delta in the Grade 1 Delaware Handicap. Ocean Seven, a half-brother to Goldikova, and Bluegrass Bull, in from Arlington Park, both were winners at the distance in July.

In 150 years of races on Union Avenue, none has been anticipated more than the Travers on Aug. 19, 1978. This was the 10th meeting of Affirmed and Alydar, in the oldest stakes race in the country, and two months after their soul-stirring clash in the Belmont Stakes, Affirmed denying Alydar once more with all the chips down.

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SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Seven of the nine fillies entered in Saturday’s Grade 1, $500,000 Test Stakes at Saratoga are stakes winners. But it may be the horse who has never before run in a black-type event that proves the one to beat.

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Jonathan Sheppard took his rightful place in the Saratoga winner’s circle Thursday following the Grade 1, $150,000 New York Turf Writers Cup Steeplechase Handicap after Italian Wedding outsprinted All Together to the wire to win by one length.

It was the 14th win in this race for the 72-year-old Hall of Fame trainer, who has won a race at Saratoga every year since 1968.

“Not really, no,” Sheppard said when asked if winning the Turf Writers Cup ever gets old. “I hope I can do it again.”

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DEL MAR, Calif. – It was quiet. Too quiet. The draw for the Pacific Classic, which became the soap-opera story of the summer one year ago, was a far more sedate affair Wednesday night at a local resort, with the two human participants in last year’s steel-cage death match both opting to sit this out.

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SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – There have been many instances when the best 3-year-old in the country was anything but special on Kentucky Derby Day.

As usual, trainer Greg Tracy has a stakes for 2-year-olds at Northlands Park surrounded with three of the seven horses entered in Saturday’s $50,000 Birdcatcher for colts and geldings.

Oddly, Tracy doesn’t have any horses entered in the $50,000 Bird of Pay for 2-year-old fillies that will share the spotlight on an eight-race card that begins at 1 p.m. Mountain.