ARCADIA, Calif. – The 19th will count as much as the first 18 did – even if it only took a maiden to defeat four other 2-year-olds Friday at Santa Anita in the $500,000 Breeders' Cup Juvenile Sprint, the opener of the two-day, 15-race sequence.

[bc_video_id:267182:]Photo Gallery: Friday Breeders' Cup Winners »

Results, video replays, and recap articles for the Friday card of the 2012 Breeders' Cup at Santa Anita.

When Game On Dude runs in the Breeders’ Cup Classic Saturday, he can probably lock up the Horse of the Year title with a victory. Yet the nation’s richest and most significant race won’t necessarily be the dramatic high point in two days of racing at Santa Anita.

ARCADIA, Calif. – Wise Dan, who probably will be favored in Saturday’s Breeders’ Cup Mile, made his first trip west of the Mississippi when, belatedly – thanks to Superstorm Sandy – he flew from Kentucky to California on Wednesday. And from all appearances, he likes it just fine at Santa Anita.

“He walked into his stall when he got here like he’d lived here all his life,” a relaxed trainer Charlie Lopresti said Friday morning, as Wise Dan got a massage and routine electro-stimulation on his hind end. “It was just like when he shipped to Woodbine. He takes everything so well.”

Allen Jerkens stood at the mile chute gap on the Churchill Downs backstretch and stared at the merciless autumn sky. He wore the expression of a man who’d just run over his own dog.

“I don’t know what the hell I’ve got to do to win one of these,” Jerkens said.

ARCADIA, Calif. – Super Ninety Nine, a major contender in the first of 15 Breeders’ Cup races this weekend at Santa Anita, the BC Juvenile Sprint, was scratched from the six-furlong race Friday morning after being cast in his stall and suffering scrapes, according to trainer Bob Baffert.

Baffert tweeted that Super Ninety Nine, owned by the Tanma Corporation of Susan Chu, would be okay in several days, but that the scrapes were severe enough to necessitate a scratch.

“Bummer,” Baffert said.

ARCADIA, Calif. – With the recent retirement of Chantal Sutherland, Rosie Napravnik has inherited the role as racing’s most high-profile active female jockey.

There was a time when Napravnik tried to hide the fact she was a female jockey, riding under the pseudonym A. R. Napravnik. (Her given first name is Anna).

“That was when I was trying to get myself started,” said Napravnik, who began her career on the Maryland circuit in 2005. “That was actually [trainer] Dickie Small’s idea.”

ARCADIA, Calif. – The Breeders’ Cup may have become a victim of its own success. Because it has expanded to more than twice its original size, now with 15 races spread over two days, oftentimes some of the clutter gets in the way of the essence of the event. But get past the background noise, and there is no question that the card presented Saturday at Santa Anita will be one of the finest in the Breeders’ Cup’s 29 editions.

Hyperbole? Hardly.

ARCADIA, Calif. – At age 8, the venerable gelding California Flag has been out to see the world. Bred and generally campaigned in California, he has traveled east the past two years to race in Kentucky. But that was nothing. During the winter of 2009-10, California Flag went the other direction when he left California, shipping to Hong Kong, where he finished a close fifth in the $1,548,000 Hong Kong Sprint, and to Dubai, where he was a good third in the $1 million Al Quoz Sprint in March 2010.

ARCADIA, Calif. - Worth Repeating was scratched early Friday morning from the Breeders’ Cup Marathon because of a minor suspensory issue, according to his trainer, Michael Machowsky.

“We trained him early yesterday [Thursday] morning in the first set, and he trained well, but when we took him out of the stall a little later he was off in his left front,” Machowsky said. “He’s had a little bit of a high suspensory problem. I had my vet look at him at that time, and when we came back and checked him last night he was still off, still not 100 percent.”