WASHINGTON - Keeneland, which opens this weekend, offers the country's best racing product, with its extraordinarily high purses producing top-quality competition. For bettors, these races have become especially attractive, because the Lexington, Ky., track this fall reduced its takeout to 16 percent, the lowest level in the nation.

ELMONT, N.Y. - Floridians can anticipate a winter racing season without parallel.

ARCADIA, Calif. - It takes a strong heart to play the racing game, not to mention a hard head and an iron-clad stomach. Still, the heart is where it all begins - supplying the power, fueling the desire - which is why both Jock Jocoy and Wally Dollase woke up Wednesday morning feeling pretty good about the world.

ELMONT, N.Y. - She was most impressive. The $750,000 Turf Classic was the nominal feature of Belmont Park's outstanding Saturday program but the most exceptional performance of the afternoon was Lailani's smashing triumph in the $750,000 Flower Bowl Invitational Handicap on the turf at a mile and a quarter.

ARCADIA, Calif. - It hardly seemed fair. Somebody find the matchmaker.

In one corner, there were two guys wearing short pants, Hawaiian shirts, and identifying themselves as the owner and the breeder of a horse named after a puppy that was pushed off a city bus.

In the other corner, representing Godolphin blue, were three fellows in Saville Row suits, looking slick and successful, represented by a filly of impeccable breeding and named with royal flair.

ARCADIA, Calif. - Now that the popular media has discarded ballplayers, supermodels, and billionaires as cultural icons, and re-discovered the old-fashioned heroism in firefighters, police, and selfless volunteers, maybe it's a good time to go forth with the candidacy of the Thoroughbred racehorse as an idol fit for mass adoration.

NEW YORK - It is suddenly just 27 days until the Breeders' Cup World Thoroughbred Championships will be held at Belmont Park, 23 miles east of the attacks on the World Trade Center 19 days ago.

More than 200 people have reportedly canceled their plans and returned their Breeders' Cup tickets. Like intimidated apprentice jockeys riding Belmont's sweeping turns for the first time, they have made their move too soon and underestimated the value of staying power. The races will and should go on, and no one who was planning to participate should be giving it a second thought.

ARCADIA, Calif. - In a perfect world, Big Jag would be throwing his 1,400 pounds around the Tim Pinfield barn right now, playful as a baby rhino, eating his junk food, and preparing for a run in next week's Ancient Title Handicap, or the Cal Cup Sprint, or maybe even another try in the Breeders' Cup Sprint a month from now in New York.

Of course, this never was a perfect world. And Big Jag is dead, far from home, a victim of post-operative complications that ended in laminitis.

ELMONT, N.Y. - Interest among Europeans in the World Thoroughbred Championships is expected to be at an all-time high next month when those battling superstars, the 3-year-old Galileo and the 5-year-old Fantastic Light, come together for a rubber match in the $4 million Breeders' Cup Classic.

The Classic is by no means an all-Europe show. Tiznow, the reigning Horse of the Year and the winner of last fall's Classic, is coming to the race smartly in California. He will have one more prep, either at Belmont Park or Santa Anita, and his people feel he will be hard to beat.

ARCADIA, Calif. - Rick Arthur, doctor of veterinary medicine, owner, and breeder of Thoroughbred racehorses, is the latest in a long line of otherwise sensible professionals to jettison all logic and take on a front-line role in the destiny of a major Thoroughbred organization.