The racing week resumes on Thursday at Del Mar with a carryover of $1,645,118 in the 20-cent Rainbow pick six and a mandatory payout looming on Saturday.

Track officials are banking on a massive carryover in the Rainbow pick six on Saturday’s Pacific Classic program to produce record handle at the meeting. This is the first year Del Mar has offered a pick six with a Rainbow format that pays the entire pool on days when there is a single winning ticket. If there are multiple winning tickets, some of the pool is directed into a carryover, which has swelled in recent weeks.

The turf marathoner Neige Blanche has earned her first Grade 1 start of the year this fall after winning Saturday’s $85,500 CTT & TOC Stakes for fillies and mares at Del Mar.

Trainer Leonard Powell said on Sunday that Neige Blanche is scheduled to have her next start in the $300,000 Rodeo Drive Stakes for fillies and mares at 1 1/4 miles on turf at Santa Anita on Oct. 2. The winner receives a fees-paid berth to the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Turf at Del Mar on Nov. 6.

“She’s getting better and better,” Powell said.

Trainer Phil D’Amato has won six of the last seven runnings of the Grade 2 Del Mar Handicap, starting one horse each of the last two years and three in 2018.

Saturday, D’Amato has a more aggressive approach in mind for the leading distance turf race of the track’s summer meeting. As of Monday, D’Amato planned to have three runners – Acclimate, Red King, and Say the Word – and perhaps as many as five with Ready Soul and Red Storm Risen under strong consideration.

“All options are open,” he said.

Trainer Dallas Stewart, never bashful to take a shot in a big race, will send out Will’s Secret against Malathaat and Maracuja in Saturday’s Grade 1, $600,000 Alabama Stakes at Saratoga.

Will’s Secret’s solid 3-year-old form went off kilter in last month’s Grade 3 Indiana Oaks where she finished a well-beaten sixth. Stewart believes there was a legitimate excuse for her poor performance.

DEL MAR, Calif. – For more than a year, trainer Richard Mandella had been trying to beat Cigar, going across the country and around the world in that futile quest, from Oaklawn Park to Hollywood Park, to Belmont Park and finally Nad al Sheba. He had found him, as Tom Durkin famously said in the 1995 Breeders’ Cup Classic, to be “unconquerable, unbeatable, invincible.”

Seven jockeys have received suspensions for careless riding since the Del Mar season began on July 16.

Most are likely to serve the days in the autumn.

Court action has enabled a majority of the affected jockeys to ride without disruption. Through Sunday, the 18^th day of the 31-day season, seven riders had been suspended for riding infractions, but only one – Drayden Van Dyke – has accepted the penalty.

Hugh Robertson celebrated the biggest win of a 50-year training career in high style.

A couple hours after Two Emmys had held off odds-on favorite Domestic Spending to win the Grade 1, $600,000 Mister D. Stakes by a neck, Robertson was back home. “I had a bowl of applesauce,” he said. “And a chocolate milk.”

DEL MAR, Calif. - Fast workouts have become commonplace of late for Express Train in advance of what may be his richest win in Saturday’s Grade 1 Pacific Classic at Del Mar.

The Pacific Classic will be Express Train’s second appearance in a $1 million race, preceded by a third to Silver State in the Grade 2 Oaklawn Handicap at Oaklawn Park in April.

Letruska, the leading older female in the country, is expected to ship to Saratoga on Tuesday and will have her final work on Thursday for the Grade 1 Personal Ensign Stakes here Aug. 28, trainer Fausto Gutierrez said Sunday.

Letruska had been based at Keeneland since her victory in the Grade 2 Fleur de Lis at Churchill Downs, but last week, due to some stabling issues, Gutierrez moved his stable from Keeneland to Monmouth Park. Letruska and Vegas Weekend - who is entered in a $50,000 claiming race on Thursday at Saratoga - are expected to van from Monmouth on Tuesday.

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - It has been four weeks since Midnight Bourbon clipped heels with Hot Rod Charlie, stumbled and unseated his rider, Paco Lopez, in the Grade 1 Haskell Invitational at Monmouth Park in a scary-looking incident.