NEW ORLEANS – By the time you read this, Steve Asmussen might have sent out his 10,000th North American winner. No one ever has done this, obviously, as Asmussen, 57, is the all-time North American leader in training wins, 9,997 through Tuesday.

Among active trainers, Jerry Hollendorfer, 76, has the next-highest total, 7,757. Todd Pletcher, who is 55, has roughly half the number of Asmussen wins, while 87-year-old D. Wayne Lukas is closing on 5,000 career winners. In other words, it’s not even close.

It’s not out of the question that the best nine- to 10-furlong turf horse in North America races Saturday at Fair Grounds. Maybe you don’t think that highly of Two Emmys. Maybe his record merits a closer look.

In March 2021, Two Emmys made his stakes debut in the Grade 2 Muniz Memorial, Fair Grounds’s most important turf race, where he set the pace and held a strong second behind Colonel Liam. Colonel Liam was coming off a win in the Grade 1 Pegasus World Cup Turf and would go on to dead-heat for first in the Grade 1 Turf Classic at Churchill Downs.

ARCADIA, Calif. – Newgrange, who won his 4-year-old debut in the Grade 2 San Pasqual Stakes on Jan. 28, is on schedule for the Grade 1 Santa Anita Handicap on March 4.

Trainer Phil D’Amato said over the weekend that the $500,000 Santa Anita Handicap at 1 1/4 miles is a preferred goal with the hope that Newgrange can play a role in the national older horse division as the year progresses.

“We’d like to continue to develop him and make a Breeders’ Cup horse out of him,” D’Amato said. “He will need to keep developing.”

According to the betting public participating in Pool 4 of the Kentucky Derby Future Wager, which closed Sunday night, trainer Tom Amoss’s best hope for the 2023 Derby runs not in the Risen Star Stakes on Saturday at Fair Grounds but in the filly-restricted Rachel Alexandra.

Hoosier Philly, the unbeaten 3-year-old filly trained by Amoss, makes her season’s debut in the Rachel Alexandra after attracting surprising support in the latest future pool, where she closed at 11-1. Only champion 2-year-old male Forte at 8-1 was a shorter price among individual horses.

Cave Rock, one of the nation’s leading 2-year-olds of 2022, has resumed workouts for the first time since a second-place finish in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile at Keeneland in November.

On Monday at Santa Anita, Cave Rock worked a half-mile in 47.80 seconds.

“He went nice and easy,” trainer Bob Baffert said. “He wanted to do more.”

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Jockey Jose Gomez, the Eclipse Award-winning apprentice jockey of 2022, officially became a journeyman rider on Sunday. He went 0 for 5 with two seconds at Aqueduct.

On Saturday, his final day as an apprentice, Gomez won the $97,000 Jimmy Winkfield Stakes aboard Drew’s Gold for his third stakes win and 171st career win.

Gomez, who sits sixth in the Aqueduct winter meet standings with 15 wins, expressed confidence that he will continue to succeed even without the five-pound weight allowance.

Pool 4 in the 2023 Kentucky Derby Future Wager closed Sunday evening following the customary three-day run with the mutuel field once again a clear-cut favorite among 40 wagering options.

The field, the 40th or “all others” option, was a 2-1 choice over reigning divisional champion Forte (8-1) and the only filly in the lineup, Hoosier Philly (11-1), following the customary three-day window of betting. Then came Tapit Trice (15-1), Instant Coffee (22-1), Victory Formation (23-1), and Geaux Rocket Ride (25-1). Thirteen of the 39 individual interests closed at 90-1 or higher.

HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – The stakes winner Code Five is among a string of six horses trainer Kory Owens has brought to Oaklawn Park.  

Owens said Friday that the group arrived about 10 days ago, and includes a trio of horses bred in Arkansas. The horses came in from Arizona. 

Owens last raced at Oaklawn in 2010, according to statistics from Daily Racing Form. He brought Uh Oh Bango to town, and the horse finished fourth in both the Rebel and Arkansas Derby.  

Big City Lights, a game second in the California Cup Sprint for statebreds at Santa Anita on Jan. 7, is scheduled to undergo exploratory knee surgery on Saturday, trainer Richard Mandella said.

Mandella said on Friday that the operation will determine whether Big City Lights has sustained cartilage damage.

“It doesn’t show much on the X-ray, but we’ll take a look,” he said.

Carlos Barbosa, who began riding in his native Puerto Rico last month, will have his American debut at Golden Gate Fields this weekend.

Barbosa, 18, is booked to ride two races on both Saturday and Sunday. Barbosa won 2 of 14 starts in Puerto Rico from Jan. 1 through last Sunday. He will be represented in this country by Nelson Arroyo.

Arroyo said last week that Barbosa intends to ride at Golden Gate Fields through the winter-spring meeting, which ends on June 11, before possibly relocating to Southern California for the summer.