Marquis Downs begins its 2013 meeting Friday evening with an eight-race program that attracted a solid 74 horses.

The card will be the first of 26 this season at the Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, racetrack that in recent years has conducted a 30-day meeting.

“We had to lop off four days and axe much of our stakes schedule,” said Rick Fior, manager of racing at Marquis Downs, adding that the cuts were necessary because a $300,000 grant previously supplied by the province was discontinued.

“We’ll be running mostly claiming races and some allowance races,” he said.

Salsa Express shoots for her second straight win, and there is a good chance she will get it when she runs in a first-level optional $35,000 claiming race for fillies and mares at Northlands Park on Friday. The 6 1/2-furlong sprint drew five horses and headlines an eight-race card that begins at 6 p.m. Mountain.

ETOBICOKE, Ontario – The aptly named Power Phil will prep for the $1 million Queen’s Plate against older, Ontario-sired allowance opposition Friday at Woodbine. The 1 1/8-mile race is the first of nine races on the card.

Power Phil graduated in his second career start in October and then wound up third in another seven-furlong sprint, the Frost King Stakes. He capped his juvenile campaign with a nose loss to the talented Pyrite Mountain in another Ontario-sired stakes, the 1 1/16-mile Kingarvie.

OCEANPORT, N.J. – It has been a very rainy start to the Monmouth Park season.

Unfortunately, that pattern continues into the new racing week – if the forecasts are accurate.

That cloud over the meet, literally and figuratively, will impact the second-level optional $32,000 claiming feature for fillies and mares on Friday.

It’s on the turf – maybe.

Trainer Graham Motion, in England preparing Animal Kingdom for Ascot, has two options in Friday’s 1 1/16-mile contest, one for either surface.

Trainer Dallas Stewart said Wednesday that the July 13 Virginia Derby at Colonial Downs is the likely next start for Golden Soul, the Kentucky Derby runner-up who finished ninth, beaten nearly 11 lengths, in the Belmont Stakes last Saturday.

“I don’t want to shorten him up,” said Stewart, alluding to the 1 1/4-mile distance of the Grade 2, $500,000 Virginia Derby, which will mark the grass debut for Golden Soul. “We can run there and then go back in the Travers” on dirt on Aug. 24 at Saratoga. “We’d be turf-to-dirt in the Travers, which might be pretty interesting.”

INGLEWOOD, Calif. – There was a time last fall when Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert was resigned to losing the 3-year-old colt Paynter to disease.

Paynter won the Haskell Invitational at Monmouth Park in July 2012, but was hospitalized for most of the next two months with colic and laminitis.

“I kept telling my wife, ‘Horses don’t survive this,’ ” Baffert said Wednesday.

Paynter fought through illness and spent the rest of the fall regaining strength. The colt rejoined Baffert’s stable in late December and resumed workouts in February.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Six older horses are entered in the $500,000 Stephen Foster Handicap, the Grade 1 race that has become the signature leadoff event for the post-Triple Crown half of the racing season in North America.

Fort Larned and Successful Dan are the co-highweights in the 1 1/8-mile race, which also figures to have Ron the Greek and Take Charge Indy among the top wagering choices. Golden Ticket, a dead-heat winner of the Travers Stakes last summer, is one of the two outsiders, along with Pool Play.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Three of the four top contenders in the Stephen Foster Handicap bring forth essentially the same running style – on or near the lead – and how it all plays out is a matter of keen interest to Pat Byrne, trainer of Take Charge Indy, one of that trio.

Along with Take Charge Indy, Successful Dan and Fort Larned also have an outstanding turn of foot that will be a critical part of race strategy when the Grade 1, $500,000 Stephen Foster is run Saturday night at Churchill Downs for the 32nd time.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Four allowance races on a Friday card might be the norm at, say, Keeneland or Saratoga, but it’s something of a rarity at Churchill Downs.

The happy exception to that rule comes this Friday at Churchill, where a $57,000, third-level sprint anchors a solid 11-race twilight program that starts at 2:45 p.m. Eastern. The 6 1/2-furlong race is carded as the 10th.

Working backward from the feature, here’s a quick rundown of that quartet:

The $400,000 Oklahoma Derby has been reinstated as a Grade 3 race for its Sept. 29 running in the most significant change to the Remington Park stakes schedule that was released on Wednesday. In all, there will be 32 stakes worth nearly $3.4 million during the 67-date meet that opens Aug. 16. The season runs through Dec. 15.