Jockey Umberto Rispoli is returning to California to ride on a full-time basis after having moved to Kentucky earlier this spring.

Rispoli is booked on two mounts at Santa Anita on Sunday. He will be represented by Tony Matos, who will continue to book mounts on behalf of Edwin Maldonado. Rispoli was previously represented in California by Scotty McClellan.

BALTIMORE – Two weeks after making his first Kentucky Derby walkover as a trainer of record, Tim Yakteen is back for the Preakness Stakes.

He brings in new a face in Armagnac while his Derby starters, Messier and Taiba, rest from their efforts.

"I'm exhausted," Yakteen said. "It's been exciting for the whole team."

BALTIMORE, Md. -- Tami Bobo has built her career around trading young horses, and she sold a Kentucky Derby starter a decade ago. Now, a colt she held on to is giving her a first taste of the Triple Crown as an owner.

Simplification, a creditable fourth in the Kentucky Derby, was the first Preakness Stakes candidate on the grounds at Pimlico last week. He is the first to carry Bobo’s silks – featuring a padlock and key, in a nod to her Secure Investments business moniker – in a Triple Crown event.

Trainer Michelle Nevin on Sunday will begin serving a seven-day suspension for an overage of the therapeutic medication prednisolone found in My Boy Tate after he won the $50,000 Leon Reed Memorial Stakes at Finger Lakes last Oct. 11. Prednisolone is a corticosteroid that is a Class 4 drug, the second-lowest on the classification system used by the Association of Racing Commissioners International.

Kentucky Derby winner Rich Strike was scheduled to arrive Wednesday afternoon at Churchill Downs, where the colt will be stabled for about a week before leaving May 26 for Belmont Park.

Trainer Eric Reed said Rich Strike will breeze for the first time since his historic 80-1 Derby triumph “either Saturday or Sunday, depending on weather” and will remain here until shipping to New York more than two weeks ahead of his next scheduled start in the Belmont Stakes on June 11.

Luis Saez’s first race aboard Secret Oath was her Kentucky Oaks victory. But the jockey was already familiar with riding for Secret Oath’s trainer, D. Wayne Lukas, having won four graded stakes aboard the Lukas-trained champion Will Take Charge.

That relationship with Lukas was key to Saez getting the mount on Secret Oath for the Oaks and for Saturday’s Preakness at Pimlico.

“Luis and I have a great relationship,” Lukas said.

Kevin McKathan’s name does not appear in the past performances of Triple Crown winner American Pharoah, Hall of Famers Silver Charm and Silverbulletday, and dual classic winner Real Quiet. But he has been integral to the success of those horses and many others.

The multiple Grade 1 winner Life Is Good returned to trainer Todd Pletcher’s Belmont Park barn on Tuesday and he could return to the races in the Grade 2, $250,000 John A. Nerud Stakes at Belmont on July 2.

Life Is Good had been at WinStar Farm in Lexington, Ky., since he returned home from Dubai where he finished fourth as the favorite in the $12 million Dubai World Cup on March 26. Prior to that, Life Is Good had won six of seven starts, including the Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile and the Pegasus World Cup, both Grade 1 races.

CHICAGO - Larry Rivelli, perennially the leading trainer at shuttered Arlington Park, and Chris Block, who long has trained one of the leading strings in Illinois, plan to stable at Colonial Downs in Virginia this summer after Thoroughbred racing in Chicago goes on hiatus between late June and late September.

Rivelli, Block, and every other horseman in Chicago faces the question of what to do with their horses when the Hawthorne spring meet ends June 25. Hawthorne hosts a summer harness meeting before resuming Thoroughbred racing on Sept. 23.

CHICAGO - Hawthorne Race Course will petition the Illinois Racing Board to return to two-day race weeks for the remainder of it’s ongoing spring 2022 race meeting.

Hawthorne ran two-day weeks in April, averaging just 6.46 starters per race during from April 1 to May 2. The Chicago-area track then added Sundays to its Friday to Saturday schedule and since has seen the starters-per-race number fall to 6.21. Hawthorne field size has been negatively impacted by a late spring and rainy weather that has limited use of the turf course to eight races so far this year.