PHOENIX, Ariz. - Trainer Jack Van Berg is hoping a change of scenery and blinkers off can snap Hostility back to life in Saturday's $35,000 Cactus Cup Handicap at Turf Paradise. The 6 1/2-furlong race for 3-year-old fillies drew a field of eight.

Despite a string of poor efforts at Santa Anita, Hostility may go favored in the Cactus Cup as the 121-pound co-highweight. A Devil His Due filly, Hostility has shown ability on the tougher Southern California circuit, but her last three races have resulted in two eighth-place finishes and a sixth.

ALBANY, Calif. - Saturday's $60,000-added San Carlos Handicap at one mile at Golden Gate Fields has drawn 13 entries. Because it is a stakes race, 12 horses will be allowed to run. The normal limit for a one-mile race is 10.

The field includes four runners from the barn of leading trainer Jerry Hollendorfer.

ARCADIA, Calif. - Kudos or Pleasantly Perfect could give trainer Richard Mandella his third win in the $1 million Santa Anita Handicap on Saturday. From his perspective, he should be gunning for a fourth.

Mandella swept the first three positions in 1997 with Siphon, Sandpit, and Gentlemen. The following year, he sent out Malek, who upset the heavily favored Gentlemen in a small field.

The race that still irks Mandella came in 1995, when the mighty Best Pal fell a head short of catching the front-running longshot Urgent Request.

ARCADIA, Calif. - Time is running down on Good Journey. A 7-year-old, he is favored to win the most prestigious mile turf race of winter on Saturday at Santa Anita, but he will be long-retired by fall, when the Breeders' Cup Mile is run on the same course.

ARCADIA, Calif. - Sitting in the jockeys' room about an hour before Thursday's first race at Santa Anita, Laffit Pincay Jr. was grooving to the tunes on a CD, his eyes closed, rocking back and forth contentedly.

"I love Glen Campbell," he said, when asked what he was listening to. "'By the Time I Get to Phoenix.' I love that song."

For the first time in his life, Pincay was showing his age.

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. - When Jerry Bailey made the logical decision to ride Congaree in Saturday's $1 million Big Cap, trainer Steve Flint was temporarily left without a jockey for his Allamerican Bertie in the $200,000 Rampart Handicap here that same afternoon. So Flint immediately reached out for the hottest rider on the grounds, tabbing John Velazquez to pinch hit for Bailey in the Grade 2 Rampart.

"You never like to lose a rider like Jerry Bailey but Johnny's been winning everything here the past couple of weeks and I have an awful lot of confidence in him," Flint said.

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. - She is the class of the field, the speed of the race, and will have the hottest rider on the grounds in the saddle. Those three factors should add up to another easy victory for Allamerican Bertie in Saturday's $200,000 Rampart Handicap at Gulfstream Park.

"I guess on paper you'd have to say she looks pretty good," said Steve Flint, Allamerican Bertie's trainer. "But she's still got to go out and do it. Although if she takes care of business and runs her race, I guess she'll be real tough to beat."

NEW ORLEANS - Histoire Sainte will try to end her career Saturday the same way she began its American phase, with a win in the $150,000 Bayou Breeders' Cup Handicap.

But her chances also could dissolve the same way they did the last two seasons, when rain moved the nine-furlong Bayou Breeders' Cup from turf to dirt.

NEW ORLEANS - The field was set and post positions drawn Thursday for Sunday's New Orleans Handicap, a Grade 2 race with a $500,000 purse.

An excellent field of 11, headed by the 120-pound highweight Balto Star, was entered in the 1 1/8-mile race. Balto Star, who will be ridden by the local jockey Eddie Martin, drew post 3. The post could present a challenge. Balto Star

STICKNEY, Ill. - It hangs over the Chicago racing scene like a dark winter cloud. Recapture, the complex and somewhat convoluted funding mechanism that was enacted in 1999 by the Illinois Legislature as a means of financial protection for racetracks and horsemen in the state's Thoroughbred and Standardbred industries, has become a political hot potato that threatens to further exacerbate the already tenuous relationships between track regulators, track owners, and horsemen.