Handle for the five Breeders’ Cup races held on Friday at Santa Anita was $34.9 million, according to charts of the races, compared to handle of $37.5 million on six Breeders’ Cup races held on the Friday card last year.

Adena Springs stallion Awesome Again is in rarified air – and his son and fellow sire Ghostzapper has a chance to join him when the Breeders’ Cup Classic is run Nov. 2 at Santa Anita Park.

ARCADIA, Calif. – A massive carryover of $891,813 in the 50-cent pick five gives bettors an early jackpot wager to conquer on Saturday’s star-studded Breeders’ Cup program at Santa Anita.

Other major bets were hit on Friday’s Breeders’ Cup program, with lucrative payoffs. The $2 pick six paid $106,839 on a day when the pool failed to reach the guaranteed $1 million, drawing $891,012 in wagers.

The winners of the pick six races were Rookie Sensation ($18.20), London Bridge ($20), Outstrip ($14), Goldencents, ($9.60), Chriselliam ($15.80), and Beholder ($7.60).

ARCADIA, Calif. - The two beasts of the East, Royal Delta and Princess of Sylmar, faded away in Friday’s Breeders’ Cup Distaff as gently as the late-afternoon sunshine slipping from the Southern California sky.

With a half-mile to run in the Distaff, Royal Delta, a two-time champion and two-time Breeders’ Cup winner, already had started losing position. She finished fourth. Princess of Sylmar, so special winning the Kentucky Oaks, the Alabama, and the Beldame, barely got out of a gallop, checking in last of six.

ARCADIA, Calif. – Beholder strongly enhanced her chances of being named champion 3-year-old filly with an overpowering victory in the Breeders’ Cup Distaff on Friday at Santa Anita, a day when the speed-biased nature of the main track was a major talking point.

ARCADIA, Calif. – Beholder and jockey Gary Stevens turned a race billed as one of the most evenly contested of Breeders’ Cup 2013 into a tour de force.

Beholder crushed the $2 million BC Distaff by 4 1/4 lengths, humbling a top-class field Friday at Santa Anita. Her rivals never really showed up.

The favorite, Royal Delta, a two-time Distaff winner, was left reeling. She finished fourth, beaten more than eight lengths. “She just didn’t run,” Royal Delta’s jockey, Mike Smith, said. “When I asked her, there was nothing there.”

ARCADIA, Calif. - Twenty-three years after suffering a heartbreaking defeat in the Breeders’ Cup as a rider, Willie Carson got to celebrate a victory in the Breeders’ Cup as an owner when Chriselliam stormed home a 2 1/2-length winner of Friday’s $1 million Juvenile Fillies Turf at Santa Anita.

Testa Rossi, held up behind horses at the quarter pole, rallied to get second by a half-length over the maiden Colonel Joan, who got third by a head over My Conquestadory.

ARCADIA, Calif. – Goldencents ran his 10 opponents off their feet, taking command in the first turn before gradually widening in a thoroughly dominating performance Friday in the seventh running of the $1 million Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile at Santa Anita.

ARCADIA, Calif. - Shortly after Outstrip finished third in the Oct. 12 Dewhurst Stakes at Newmarket in England, his trainer, Charlie Appleby, said Outstrip would be put away for the winter, pointed to the English 2000 Guineas in May. A week later, plans had changed: Outstrip was coming to the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf.

Good call.

ARCADIA, Calif. – For the first mile of Friday’s $500,000 Breeders’ Cup Marathon at Santa Anita, London Bridge was giving Hall of Fame jockey Mike Smith few positive vibes.

Smith worried London Bridge was struggling on Santa Anita’s dirt track, in his first start on the surface. When the field reached the end of the backstretch in the race over 1 3/4 miles, the scenario changed.

“At the three-eighths pole, all of a sudden, he jumped on the line,” Smith said of what he felt through his reins. “It was the first time.”