Sam Houston Race Park has canceled Thursday night’s card due to inclement weather, according to track publicist Martha Claussen.

There is winter weather expected Thursday night in Houston. Some areas of the state received snow overnight.

Sam Houston has received Texas Racing Commission approval to move Thursday’s nine-race card in its entirety to Wednesday, Feb. 9. First post will be 4 p.m. Central.

The track on Thursday morning was making decisions on the status of simulcast operations that evening.

ARCADIA, Calif. – Ed Maier, a longtime racing fan, breeder and racing-syndicate executive, died Jan. 26 at Arcadia Methodist Hospital. He was 71.

Maier, president of Elevated Bloodstock, purchased his first racehorse in 1978. According to his son Scott, Maier owned or bred more than 200 Thoroughbreds that raced in California and Western Canada. He was instrumental in Flavien Prat obtaining his P1 Visa to ride in the U.S.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Despite having a horse who has won two consecutive races, including a stakes last out, trainer Kelly Breen was still searching for a rider late Wednesday morning for his 3-year-old Courvoisier, who figures to be one of the top choices in Saturday’s Grade 3, $250,000 Withers Stakes at Aqueduct.

Greeley and Ben, who was one of the winningest horses of 2021, is now 2 for 2 in 2022 after running arguably the best race of his career in the $75,000 Stonerside Sprint on Sunday at Sam Houston.

“He was literally challenged the entire way, got headed, and just kept finding more,” said owner and trainer Karl Broberg.

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Zandon is on schedule to make his 3-year-old debut later this month for Chad Brown.

Jack Christopher – not so much.

Zandon, beaten a nose by Mo Donegal in the Dec. 4 Remsen at Aqueduct in just his second start, will be shipped to Fair Grounds for the Risen Star on Feb. 19 at 1 1/8 miles rather than run in the 1 1/16-mile Holy Bull on Saturday at Gulfstream Park.

“We went back and forth on whether to start out with him here,” Brown said. “But we prefer the longer distance of the Risen Star, and it has more points.”

Another Mystery and Fantasioso put on a show winning the Grade 3, $200,000 John B. Connally Turf Cup in a dead heat Sunday at Sam Houston Race Park and now appear headed for a rematch.

Both horses are candidates for the Grade 2, $350,000 Elkhorn over the same mile and a half distance on turf April 23 at Keeneland, their respective trainers said Tuesday.

Monmouth Park in New Jersey has put in place sizeable purse increases for a number of stakes races that will appear on the undercard of its richest race, the $1 million Haskell Stakes, the track announced on Tuesday.

Four graded stakes on the July 23 Haskell undercard will have their purses boosted: the Grade 1 United Nations, from $500,000 last year to $600,000 this year; the Grade 3 Monmouth Cup, from $300,000 to $400,000; the Grade 3 Molly Pitcher, from $250,000 to $400,000; and the Grade 3 Matchmaker, from $150,000 to $200,000.

Elle Z’s game win Saturday in the Fred Aime Memorial Stakes was part of an excellent run for trainer Chris Hartman, who went 4 for 4 Saturday and Sunday with Fair Grounds starters.

“The weekend was wonderful,” said Hartman, who’s up to 15 winners this meet, five behind leading trainer Brad Cox through Sunday. “That was some kind of run from Elle Z.”

The 3-year-old filly North County, freshened after winning the Untapable Stakes on Dec. 26, returned to the Fair Grounds work tab Saturday and is on track to race Feb. 19 in the Rachel Alexandra Stakes.

North County won on turf in her debut before running her career mark to 3 for 3 with a dirt allowance win at Keeneland and a neck victory in the Untapable at Fair Grounds. She’s versatile in terms of racing surface, but her trainer, Brendan Walsh, might have an even better 3-year-old grass filly in his Fair Grounds barn.

Jack Gilligan, the 25-year-old jockey, is set to resume race riding later this week at Fair Grounds.

Gilligan was named to ride a horse on Friday, but said that mount will be scratched and that his first race in more than one year comes Saturday.