Horse Racing News by Claire Novak

About 12 months ago, Garrett Gomez hit the top of the stretch at Churchill Downs with a ton of horse beneath him.

It is springtime in Kentucky when a young trainer stands beside the rail at Keeneland Race Course. Across the track a big bay filly is powering her way through her morning gallop; head down, all business.

Bambara, the Venezuelan filly who is nominated to the April 9 Apple Blossom Invitational at Oaklawn Park, will make her U.S. debut Saturday in Gulfstream's Rampart Stakes, trainer Pablo Andrade said Wednesday.

It is all systems go for Team Zenyatta en route to the April 9 Apple Blossom Invitational at Oaklawn Park, a race the 6-year-old mare won in 2008 and has been pointing toward since the beginning of the year.

This Saturday, in the 25 minutes it takes put on two races from paddock to finish line, Charles Cella will get the answer he's been looking for.

When a 5-year-old mare named St Trinians heads postward in Saturday's running of the $750,000 Santa Anita Handicap (G1), she'll attempt to become the first female winner in the race's 73-year history.

There were only two questions for the average racing fan to ask last Saturday in the wake of Caracortado's upset victory under jockey Paul Atkinson in the Robert B. Lewis Stakes.

Aqueduct Race Course remains the center of a ridiculous political merry-go-round - and if the State doesn't step in to do something, the ponies won't keep running for long.