ARCADIA, Calif. - Breeders' Cup Classic winner Pleasantly Perfect will race next year at age 6, according to trainer Richard Mandella. "I would guess I will give him a break and point to the [Santa Anita] Handicap preps, or to Dubai," Mandella said Tuesday. "I plan to rest them all and point for the Santa Anita meet. They've done enough. If you keep going, you end up with nothing."

Mandella was referring to his seven Breeders' Cup starters. Along with Pleasantly Perfect, the winners were Halfbridled (Juvenile Fillies), Johar (Turf), and Action This Day (Juvenile).

The Kentucky Racing Commission assigned racing dates at its meeting Tuesday morning, and the only significant change to the Thoroughbred racing schedule is that Ellis Park will race six days a week in 2004. Ellis Park will add Mondays to its summer meet in part to position itself alongside Saratoga and Del Mar in the summer simulcast market. Those tracks also race Mondays.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. - With easy wins in ungraded stakes on the turf and dirt, Misty Sixes looks for a bigger prize in Saturday's Grade 3, $100,000 Turnback the Alarm Handicap over Aqueduct's main track.

Misty Sixes exits an 11 3/4-length win in the Lighthouse Stakes on the dirt at Monmouth Park on Sept. 6. The Lighthouse was originally scheduled to be run on the turf, a surface on which Misty Sixes won the Brookmeade Stakes at Colonial Downs on July 4 by 7 1/4 lengths.

CHICAGO - Until Sunday, everything had gone startlingly well this year for 6-year-old Apt to Be. After reaching the best form of his career with a seven-length win in the Grade 3 Hanshin Handicap at Arlington, Apt to Be came up with a foot problem. He returned Sept. 21 with a strong allowance win and shipped to Churchill Downs for Sunday's Grade 3 Ack Ack Handicap training like a bear.

Trainer Cole Norman's trip to Santa Anita last Saturday was a nightmare for him, but not for Pie N Burger, one of the best horses in his stable. It took all the strength he had to make it to the paddock to saddle Pie N Burger to win the $150,000 Seabiscuit Handicap.

Stricken by the flu not long after he arrived in California, Norman was bedridden for a couple of days. He missed all of the Breeders' Cup races except for the Classic, which was run two races before the Seabiscuit.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. - Fircroft, inactive since finishing last of six in the Grade 1 Alabama at Saratoga in August, returns to the races in a $50,000 allowance race Thursday at Aqueduct.

Fircroft, who is owned by G. Watts Humphrey Jr., will be a deserving favorite among five fillies entered in the 1 1/8-mile dirt race for nonwinners-of-two-other-than.

Fircroft's last win came in the off-the-turf Miss Grillo at Aqueduct on Oct. 27, 2002. The ungraded Miss Grillo was run at the same distance as that of Thursday's allowance race.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - The eighth race at Churchill Downs, a $48,800 nonwinners-of-three allowance, is not the richest race on Thursday, nor is it the deepest. It is simply the classiest, featuring a graded-stakes winner and another with exciting potential.

The seven-furlong sprint drew a field of eight, including Crowned Dancer, the 2002 Hollywood Juvenile Championship winner, and Eugene's Third Son, the runner-up in this year's Arkansas Derby and Lane's End Spiral.

ETOBICOKE, Ontario - French import Marche de Paix could be a winner Thursday at Woodbine in her second North American outing, in a second-level allowance scheduled for a mile on the grass.

ARCADIA, Calif. - The veteran gelding Macward has long been regarded as the ultimate horse-for-course on Santa Anita's downhill turf layout. But the 7-year-old has fallen into a tailspin. After winning 4 of his first 8 starts down the unique course, age has caught up. Macward has lost nine in a row on the hillside.

ETOBICOKE, Ontario - Wait till next year.

That will have to do as the battle cry for Soaring Free and Perfect Soul, the only Woodbine-based performers in Saturday's Breeders' Cup at Santa Anita.

Soaring Free, owned by Sam-Son Farm and trained by Mark Frostad, and Perfect Soul, owned by Charles Fipke and trained by Roger Attfield, both competed in the Breeders' Cup Mile.

Soaring Free finished fifth, beaten 3 1/4 lengths, with Perfect Soul another 2 3/4 lengths back in ninth.