ARCADIA, Calif. – The longest race of the year adds style to closing day of the long winter meet at Santa Anita – a 1 3/4-mile turf spectacle that is pure majesty.

The San Juan Capistrano Handicap will be run for the 74th time on Sunday, final day of the 71-day season. Although trainer Richard Mandella has not won the race in 20 years, the San Juan still kindles passion.

Racing will move to a three-day week Friday, with post time for the first of 10 races set for 1 p.m. Eastern. Friday also will mark the second weekly podcast featuring Jennifer Morrison and Renee Kierans, a pilot project sponsored by the local Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association.

Morrison, the editor of Canadian Thoroughbred and a freelance contributor to Daily Racing Form, and Kierans, a trainer and former television host for Woodbine, will be handicapping selected races at Woodbine and Fort Erie and major features south of the border.

AUBURN, Wash. – It’s been said you can’t tell the players without a scorecard, and that old chestnut has seldom been more applicable than this week at Emerald Downs. The start of 75-day meeting on Friday has been accompanied by wholesale turnover in the jockey colony.

Leslie Mawing and William Antongeorgi, who combined to win 168 races last year – or 24 percent of all races run – have relocated to other circuits, and in the scramble to fill the void, at least eight new riders have been combing the Emerald backstretch trying to make a positive impression.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia - Trainer Troy Taylor set a record by winning 18 stakes at Hastings last year, and he is going to have strong chances in both the $50,000 Brighouse Belles for fillies and mares next Saturday and the $50,000 George Royal for 3-year-olds and up next Sunday. Both races are at 6 1/2 furlongs.

Jermaine Bridgmohan relocated here last summer with an eye toward making the Woodbine meeting a regular part of his riding future. And while Bridgmohan compiled a very respectable record of 29-26-18 from 168 mounts, winning with 17 percent of his starters and earning more than $1 million in purse money, he did so while riding solely for American owners, and his immigration status remains unchanged heading into the 2013 meeting.

ARCADIA, Calif. – Procurement may have finished second in the Pasadena Stakes at Santa Anita on March 29, but the 3-year-old must do more to earn accolades from trainer Tom Proctor.

“I don’t know if he’s a top horse, but I think he’ll be a nice horse,” Proctor said.

Procurement can enhance his reputation when he starts as the favorite in Sunday’s $70,000 La Puente Stakes for 3-year-olds over 1 1/8 miles on turf at Santa Anita.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia – Trainer Terry Jordan is back in British Columbia on a permanent basis after six very successful years racing in Ontario, where he won 146 races at Woodbine and the horses he trained earned $5.8 million.

LEXINGTON, Ky. – Dylan Davis, the 19-year-old youngest child of famed retired jockey Robbie Davis, picked up the fifth win of his short riding career in piloting Skylander to victory in the second race at Keeneland on Friday. Per racing rules, with his fifth victory his weight allowance as an apprentice was reduced from 10 pounds to 7.

Davis rode like a veteran in winning aboard Wesley Ward-trained Skylander ($8.60), confidently bringing him from off the pace to win under a hand ride in a race for $20,000 3-year-old claimers. The win was his first at Keeneland.

With an eye toward some of the more prestigious one-turn races in the 3-year-old filly division this summer, Kauai Katie will drop down in class when she returns from a three-month layoff in Sunday’s $75,000 Road Princess Stakes at Aqueduct.

The Road Princess, scheduled for seven furlongs, is the closing-day feature of Aqueduct’s six-month meet. Racing on this circuit moves to Belmont Park on Friday.

ETOBICOKE, Ontario – Gary Boulanger was the toast of the town here back in 2001, winning the Queen’s Plate and Woodbine Oaks aboard Canada’s champion 3-year-old filly, Dancethruthedawn.

Boulanger, after winning 153 races for earnings of more than $9 million in two campaigns here, did not return the following season, however, saying his move home to southern Florida was a “family decision.”