David Carroll, former Irish jockey, former exercise rider for Easy Goer, former trainer, current assistant trainer to Mark Casse, has crossed to the other side of the River 50 yet still persists in galloping horses most mornings. This can be risky for an older gentleman, and there was Carroll last weekend limping on an ankle the size of a grapefruit and the color of a grape.

You can win the Kentucky Oaks with a filly ultimately cut out to be a sprinter. Owner Joel Politi and trainer Tom Amoss know firsthand.

In 2019, Serengeti Empress scored a 13-1 Kentucky Oaks upset for them. Later that year she raced competitively in the Breeders’ Cup Distaff and the following spring romped over a sloppy track in the two-turn Azeri, but Serengeti Empress’s peak post-Oaks performances came around one turn – a win in the Grade 1 Ballerina and a second last fall in the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint.

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Gulfstream officials on Wednesday were expecting six fillies and mares for the Grade 3 Hurricane Bertie, to be run Saturday with two other stakes.

Cory Gal and Sound Machine are among the likely favorites in the $100,000 Hurricane Bertie, which was postponed from its original March 13 date for a lack of sufficient entries. The 6 1/2-furlong race will be part of a Saturday card that also includes a pair of $75,000 turf sprints, the Texas Glitter for 3-year-olds and the Melody of Colors for 3-year-old fillies.

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – For just the third time at the championship meet, which began Dec. 2, ontrack spectators will be permitted when the Florida Derby is run March 27. Tickets are on sale through the track website on a limited basis, just as they were for the Jan. 23 Pegasus and Feb. 27 Fountain of Youth. Strict pandemic-related protocols apply.

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Chantal Sutherland is switching circuits again. The 45-year-old jockey has been exercising horses this winter in Florida and now has decided to resume riding races, starting with the March 28 Florida Cup card at Tampa Bay Downs and into the Gulfstream Park spring-summer meet, which runs April 1 to Sept. 26.

Former jockey John Raymond Rettele, who rode as John O. Rettele, died at age 70 on March 10 in Tecumseh, Neb.

Rettele rode for 23 years, according to his daughter Jamie, before retiring in 1993. From 1976 through 1993, the period for which statistics are available, Rettele won 1,174 races, primarily in Nebraska and at Fairmount Park in Southern Illinois.

Del Mar is planning on allowing fans, at a capacity still to be determined, when its summer meeting opens on July 16, the track said in a release on Tuesday.

Citing encouraging trends in public-health data, including vaccination rates, and a statewide edict that on April 1 will allow for outdoor sports venues to have fans in some capacity – coinciding with the opening of baseball season – the expectation is that fans will be allowed at Del Mar after being barred from the facility last summer and fall owing to the COVID-19 pandemic.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Excellent Timing rewarded the restraint his connections showed by not rushing him onto the Triple Crown trail with a 6 3/4-length victory in Sunday’s $100,000 Damon Runyon Stakes for New York-bred 3-year-olds.

Now his high-profile owners, led by Michael Dubb, and trainer Chad Brown will have decisions to make on how to proceed with the promising son of Not This Time, who is now 2 for 3.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Parx Racing-based Danny Velazquez, trainer of Triple Crown hopeful Brooklyn Strong, was released from a Bucks County, Pa., hospital Sunday night after suffering injuries as the result of a freak accident Saturday morning at Parx.

Velazquez said he was aboard his stable pony jogging a horse clockwise, or the opposite way of regular training, when a horse trained by Richard Vega unseated its rider and ran into Velazquez and his pony.

NEW ORLEANS – The best-looking horse seen working Monday at Fair Grounds was, appropriately, the highest-profile horse seen working during a quiet training session in balmy New Orleans.

Midnight Bourbon, trying to punch his ticket to the Kentucky Derby when he starts Saturday in the $1 million Louisiana Derby, breezed an easy half-mile in 49.20 seconds. The colt looked good when he won the Lecomte Stakes in January and looks even better now.