Boy Named Sue? Here's the saga of Boy named Girl, as owner Bonney Powers joked of her $5,000 claim. The male East Coast Girl comes into Saturday's $100,000 Claiming Crown Ready's Rocket Express off of two wins and two thirds in four starts for her new owner and trainer Carl O'Callaghan. We tried something new and unplanned here: using audio from a phone interview (done with speaker phone into digital record, hence the quality, never mind background noise of being outside) with Powers to serve as voice-over on training video. She was just too much fun not to use her voice to set up the video. That's followed by in-person video of O'Callaghan. Thumb nail photo by Gwen Davis/Davis Innovation.

When trainer Greg Compton claimed the 4-year-old colt Auto Glide in January at Oaklawn Park, "he just looked like a nice, solid conditioned horse for $30,000, non-winners of 2.." Now Auto Glide is a stakes winner who has earned around $250,000 for Compton and his partners Mark Dean and Mike Cohen and now is in the $200,000 Claiming Crown Jewel with a real shot. Auto Glide has four wins and two thirds in six races for the barn. "Honestly, he's been way better than we ever expected," Compton said. "Now we're in a spot, running in a really nice race here at Churchill and hopefully things go our way... He's feeling really good today, so I figure he's going to run well tomorrow." Julien Leparoux, who is two wins shy of 3,000 for his career, is 3-for-3 on Auto Glide,

We catch up with Trace Messina, Churchill Downs assistant to trainer Brad Cox and son of George Messina, co-owner of Bourbon Day with Ten Strike Racing. Trace (as in tres, Spanish for 3, because he's George Messina III) talks about claiming the 5-year-old gelding for $30,000 in New Orleans, being in the Claiming Crown and how he sees Saturday's $200,000 Claiming Crown Jewel. Bourbon Day is 6 for 16 overall and in five starts for Ten Strike and the Messinas has two wins, two seconds and a third. He's coming in off a seven-length victory in an Aqueduct off-the-turf allowance, earning a career-best 98 Bris speed figure.

Woodbine-based trainer Michael Wright Jr. trains only seven horses, but three of them are in the three turf stakes at Saturday's Claiming Crown at Churchill Downs: Journeyman in the $175,000 Emerald, Perhaps Tonight in the $150,000 Tiara and Cotton in the $150,000 Canterbury Tom Metzen Memorial. Wright gives us some insight into his trio -- each of whom could provide betting value.

Meet Mark Hibdon, a Texan now based at Delta Downs whose $5,000 claim Tennessee Moon leads North America in wins this year with 11. Hibdon is hoping No. 12 comes Saturday, Nov. 16, in the $100,000 Claiming Crown Glass Slipper, the first time he's ever run a horse at Churchill Downs. "I know she’s not Seabiscuit, but she is to us," he says. We've run the interview pretty much in its entirety because, well, he's great!

Kentucky HBPA President Rick Hiles believes Churchill Downs, host to Saturday's Claiming Crown, will become at least a semi-permanent site of the racing series giving racing's warriors their own day in the spotlight. As past Claiming Crown winner, Hiles said: "It's an adrenaline rush. Must people don't get the chance to win the Kentucky Derby. Winning this gives you a lot of momentum, makes you feel really good inside -- and you're really glad for the horse."

Hoodlum this year has started to look like a horse that cost $290,000 as a yearling. Acquired by John and Allen McCulloch, Hoodlum was turned out and ridden under a western saddle for months before going to trainer Al Stall. Now he's in great form, going into the Claiming Crown's $100,000 Kent Stirling Memorial Iron Horse Saturday at Churchill Downs. We speak with Stall before Hoodlum goes to the track with exercise rider Carlos Osorio. Photos by Gwen Davis/Davis Innovation.

A fixture in New York racing, trainer David Jacobson this fall launched a division in Kentucky stabled at Churchill Downs' Trackside Training Center. He has four horses entered in Saturday's Claiming Crown - the first time he will have participated in racing's day honoring the blue-collar warriors so vital to the industry. That includes Laughing Boy, who in March won Aqueduct's $150,000 Excelsior Stakes on the DQ of first-place finisher Messier for interference. We speak to Jacobson at his Trackside barn.

Trainer Joe Sharp is going for a repeat in the $200,000 Claiming Crown Jewel -- one of eight races comprising the Claiming Crown Nov. 16 at Churchill Downs -- with Money Supply. Since being claimed for $35K last year, Money Supply not only won the Jewel in New Orleans but went on to take the G3 Mineshaft Stakes and finished third in the G2 New Orleans Classic. After getting a freshening following a disappointing performance at Kentucky Downs, Money Supply signaled his sharpness for the Jewel by working fie-eighths of a mile in a minute flat with Sharp in the sale. 'I couldn't have been happier,' Sharp said. "He worked like an absolute gorilla this morning. He really did.... This morning's work gave me a lot of confidence."