Greetings and a belated Happy New Year from my corner of The Saratogian's newsroom!

One of my New Year's resolutions was to blog more - and fortunately, Gulfstream Park gave me the perfect opportunity to do so by staging the first running of the Gulfstream Park Derby on New Year's Day.

For the uninitiated, all Thoroughbreds officially turn a year older on Jan. 1, regardless of their actual date of foaling. The Gulfstream Park Derby was open to the newly-turned 3-year-olds of 2012 who are taking their first steps on the road to this year's Kentucky Derby.

The mile-and-a-sixteenth event was won by Reveron, who was making his first start around two turns after posting back-to-back wins at Calder. The colt, who hasn't missed the board in five starts, is by the speedy Songandaprayer, a graded winner best known for running the fastest opening half-mile in Kentucky Derby history before backing up to finish unplaced in 2001. However, Reveron does get a dose of stamina from his female family. Presumably, he'll continue down Florida's series of Triple Crown preps, meaning we'll get to see him against tougher competition and at longer distances.

Finishing second in his stakes debut was Casual Trick, who was an impressive maiden winner at Churchill Downs last fall for Hall of Famer Nick Zito.

As we turn our attention to this 3-year-old crop, make sure to go back and read columnist Michael Veitch's first ranking of the Triple Crown contenders, which was published Sunday. My top 10 list will be out in Thursday's edition of The Saratogian.