So, who do you like in the World Thoroughbred Championships Bessemer Trust Breeders' Cup Juvenile?

It's better than 1-10 that this mouthful will never be spoken, despite the announcement this past Tuesday that the Breeders' Cup (which is now a joint operating entity with the National Thoroughbred Racing Associations) is adding a new brand (World Thoroughbred Championships) and is trying to add some sponsors (Bessemer Trust volunteered to go first, to get the ball rolling) to those eight races each fall that sometimes, but not always, determine racing's champions.

ELMONT, N.Y. - One of the most arresting confrontations of the season is on tap for Sunday when Include and Albert the Great clash in the $500,000 Suburban Handicap at 1 1/4 miles.

These are two outstanding handicap horses, talented, consistent, and brave of heart. Speed figures present them as being close in performance, an analysis confirmed in the Pimlico Special when Include, with a seven-pound pull in the weights, won by a neck. They are only a pound apart for the historic Suburban and could give us a finish of the kind to be savored in perpetuity.

ELMONT, N.Y. - Achievement is the operational word when it comes to Saturday's $250,000 Mother Goose Stakes, a Grade 1 race for 3-year-old fillies at nine furlongs.

Fleet Renee, the probable favorite, won the Ashland Stakes at Keeneland this spring. Forest Secrets won the Acorn Mile here. Tap Dance won the Bonnie Miss at Gulfstream and Real Cozzy won the Fair Grounds Oaks in New Orleans. Mystic Lady beat the colts in Monmouth Park's Jersey Derby and Zonk captured the Revidere Stakes at that same track.

INGLEWOOD, Calif. - Bob Baffert was being very brave, or very foolhardy. Here he was, about to launch an expensive legal battle over a drug positive that he contends was the result of contamination, and he was letting reporters enter his high-powered shed row at Santa Anita Park.

Who knows where they had been?

INGLEWOOD, Calif. - Walter Vosburgh was a racing secretary in the days when the job required a certain appreciation for the devices of persuasion employed during the Spanish Inquisition. They say he used to take mordant delight at the sight of a great horse hauling a huge amount of weight in one of his famous handicaps. If the horse won, Vosburgh took note. Perhaps a bit more lead was required next time in order to level the playing field.

ELMONT, N.Y. - After four weeks of racing, Monmouth Park, the popular resort course on the Jersey Shore, is off to a promising start.

To a visitor from the United States, horse racing at Hipodromo El Comandante at first may appear comfortingly familiar. The clubhouse could belong to any modest American track, with only the palm trees and the pastel color scheme suggesting a Caribbean flavor. The types of wagers, the classes of races, and the format of past-performance data in the program are American-style. And many of the horses who compete here are American-bred.

INGLEWOOD, Calif. - It was the kind of weekend that made a red-blooded racing fan want to be a dozen places at once. The world was hardly big enough to hold all of the action. Simulcasting is great, and the Internet helps keep the brain in the game. But there is nothing like being there, unless it's being everywhere.

ELMONT, N.Y. - This is a tale of two fillies, a memorable weekend, and a Breeders' Cup rendezvous.

INGLEWOOD, Calif. - If ever there was a perfect name for Allen Paulson's last good horse, Astra fits the bill. The word summons an image of shimmering stars, arrayed upon a canvas of deepest sky - the same sky that lured Paulson to such heights as an aerospace entrepreneur and record-setting pilot.