ELMONT, N.Y. – Maxfield, runner-up to Knicks Go in the Grade 1 Whitney at Saratoga, heads a field of six expected to run in the Grade 1, $500,000 Woodward Stakes here Oct. 2.

Maxfield, with seven wins from nine starts, will be looking for his first Grade 1 victory since he took the Breeders’ Futurity at 2 in 2019. Trainer Brendan Walsh shipped Maxfield from Saratoga – where he was stabled most of the summer – to Belmont Park earlier in the week. He was scheduled to have his final breeze over Belmont’s main track on Saturday.

Peter Tunney, the longtime racing executive at Golden Gate Fields in Northern California, died Wednesday after a lengthy illness, his family and friends said Thursday.

Tunney, 83, died at his home in Piedmont, Calif., not far from Golden Gate Fields.

The son of a racing official and steward, Tunney began his involvement in racing in the 1960s, working as a racing official at Southern California tracks, including Del Mar where he was the racing secretary for three years from 1972-74.

Charmaine’s Mia began 2021 with three consecutive graded stakes wins in turf races at six furlongs and a mile at Santa Anita only to follow that success with sixth-place finishes in two important races in the spring and summer.

The versatile 5-year-old’s season will change again this fall when she starts for the first time on Santa Anita’s unique hillside turf course and faces males in the Grade 2 Eddie D Stakes at about 6 1/2 furlongs on Oct. 1, opening day of the track’s five-week autumn meeting.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Surely she doesn’t know it, but a filly named Famed will be carrying very high expectations Sunday when making her career debut in the eighth race at Churchill.

Famed is a 2-year-old filly by Uncle Mo out of Delightful Quality, which makes her a half-sister to her Brad Cox stablemate Essential Quality, the current leader of the 3-year-old division. Both are Godolphin homebreds.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – They don’t enter for the final two stakes of the September meet at Churchill Downs until Wednesday, so Tommy Drury is giving himself a little more time to think about which Grade 3 race is next for Sprawl.

Either the $400,000 Lukas Classic or the $300,000 Ack Ack next Saturday represent a logical next spot for Sprawl, the resurgent 4-year-old who earned a career-best 98 Beyer Speed Figure in winning the West Virginia Governor’s on Aug. 7 at Mountaineer Park in his latest start.

The Maryland Racing Commission has approved a motion to eliminate threshold levels for five corticosteroids after a number of horses tested positive for one of the anti-inflammatory medications, dexamethasone, over the past several months.

A nine-race card Saturday brings the curtain down on the 2021 racing season at Arlington.

It’s nearly certain that curtain won’t be rising again – dark times in Illinois racing.

The Illinois Racing Board on Thursday handed out 2022 racing dates during its annual dates award meeting. Arlington and its parent company, Churchill Downs Inc., declined to apply for any.

Miss Amulet, third in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf at Keeneland last November, is scheduled to join trainer Simon Callaghan’s stable in early October.

Callaghan said in a text message on Thursday that Miss Amulet is currently based in Kentucky following a fifth-place finish in the Grade 2 Franklin-Simpson Stakes against males at 6 1/2 furlongs on turf at Kentucky Downs on Sept. 11, her final start for trainer Ken Condon.

Moonlight d’Oro, unraced since a win in the Grade 3 Las Virgenes Stakes in Febrruary, is nearing a return to racing in the final weeks of the Santa Anita autumn meeting, which runs from Oct. 1-31.

“She’s still about three weeks away,” trainer Richard Mandella said on Thursday.

Owned by Spendthrift Farm and the My Racehorse partnership, Moonlight d’Oro won her stakes debut in the one-mile Las Virgenes in a manner that suggested she would play an important role in stakes for 3-year-old fillies in the spring. A bone chip detected in a knee put an end to those plans.

Apprentice jockey Cesar Ortega will be sidelined until the end of the year after suffering an injury to his pancreas in a seven-horse accident at Del Mar on Aug. 22.

Ortega, 26, was initially thought to have avoided a serious injury, but further examination in the days following the accident led to a more serious diagnosis, according to his wife, Emily.

Ortega underwent surgery on a lacerated pancreas and was hospitalized for several days in late August, Emily Ortega said.