LEXINGTON, Ky. – With three weeks until the Breeders’ Cup is run at Keeneland, most everything is coming into focus, particularly field composition.

Still, the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint – one of the 14 BC events to be run here Nov. 6-7 – figures to tack on an extra starter or two when the Grade 2, $200,000 Raven Run Stakes is run Saturday at Keeneland at seven furlongs. The most plausible additions are Venetian Harbor and Four Graces, although this is an especially deep renewal of a seven-furlong race that two years ago produced a surprise Breeders’ Cup winner.

It’s Magical versus Mishriff in the Group 1 Champion Stakes on Saturday at Ascot.

With the retirement of Enable, Magical assumes the role of top European older female in training, a position she’s favored to maintain in the 1 1/4-mile Champion, headliner on the annual QIPCO Champions Day. Three-year-old Mishriff is based in England but makes his first group stakes start there Saturday, having risen rapidly to prominence this summer winning the Prix du Jockey Club (French Derby) and more recently the Group 2 Prix Guillaume d’Ornano on Aug. 15 at Deauville.

Classy England-based Kameko will skip the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes on Saturday at Ascot because of very soft turf and hope to find something firmer next month in the Breeders’ Cup Mile at Keeneland.

His connections would do well not to look back at the 2015 Keeneland Breeders’ Cup, which featured a week of cold rain and a sodden grass course.

:: BREEDERS’ CUP 2020: See DRF’s special section with top contenders, odds, comments, news, and more for each division

Pirate’s Punch will be a longshot in the $1 million Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile on Nov. 7 at Keeneland, but considering where his career was in the summer of 2019, and where he is now, a win would be in line with the odds he’s overcome the past 16 months.

Once considered a fairly promising prospect before his 2-year-old debut, Pirate’s Punch by the summer of his 3-year-old season was an abject disappointment. He had raced five times, and time off, a switch in trainers, riders, and locales, removing and then adding blinkers, and a drop in class, all failed to stop his declining form.

Sometimes it can be just days before departure when trainer Aidan O’Brien reveals the horse, or horses, he plans to send from Ireland for the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf. And it’s an important announcement: O’Brien is an annual participant in the Juvenile Turf and has won it four times in the race’s 13-year history, including in 2015, the only year Keeneland hosted the Breeders’ Cup, with Hit It a Bomb.

At 6, Arklow has a renewed focus on racing and training in advance of a scheduled third career appearance in the $4 million Breeders’ Cup Turf on Nov. 7 at Keeneland.

Credit the addition of blinkers, absent for Arklow’s first 28 starts, as part of a revival that has left Kentucky trainer Brad Cox optimistic about the veteran horse’s chances.

When it comes to the Breeders’ Cup, Kevin Attard is torn.

The trainer of the terrific 7-year-old mare Starship Jubilee is trying to decide whether to run her in the $2 million Filly and Mare Turf at 1 3/16 miles or the $2 million Mile, where she would meet mostly males.

While Jackie’s Warrior, winner of Saturday’s Grade 1 Champagne, and Essential Quality, the Grade 1 Breeders’ Futurity winner, figure to take the bulk of the money in this year’s $2 million Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, one potential under-the-radar horse who deserves attention is Rombauer, the runner-up from the Grade 1 American Pharoah Stakes at Santa Anita.

At the end of the 2019 season, it would have been no stretch to forecast Got Stormy as a major contender for the 2020 Breeders’ Cup Mile at Keeneland. The multiple Grade 1 winner – who set a course record in the Fourstardave Handicap against males at Saratoga –was a fine second to champion Uni in the 2019 Mile at Santa Anita.

But after a season of downs and ups and reinvention, Got Stormy now appears more likely to be one of the favorites for the Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint.

Second of July debuted in September at Belmont Park and caused fireworks on the toteboard, returning $138.50 for his maiden victory as the longest shot in the race. The colt was again dismissed three weeks later as the highest price in Belmont’s Grade 3 Futurity. He rewarded his backers a second time, to the tune of $33, by beating favored After Five by a half-length.