La Wally is an improving sort who will head into the $2 million Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies on Oct. 31 at Del Mar off a runner-up finish to the race’s early favorite, Explora.

The pair met in the Oak Leaf last Saturday at Santa Anita.

“We thought she ran well,” said Mark Glatt, who trains La Wally for Muir Hut Stables. “We didn’t think she had the best trip in the world and so we were a little bit disappointed with it, but she came back well and at the moment we are going to point towards the Breeders’ Cup.”

At age 9, you’d expect a racehorse, particularly one as accomplished as Khaadem, to take raceday activities calmly in stride, old hat, perhaps setting a good example for the younger horses in the field.

Hardly. Khaadem is quirky, to put it mildly. The mercurial gelding is known to act up in the paddock, to be bad at the starting gate, and generally to keep his handlers on their toes.

“He’s been a strange character, but a lovable one,” trainer Charlie Hills said.

The prep races are done for the vast majority of candidates for the 2025 Breeders’ Cup. But not for Lovesick Blues, whose trainer Librado Barocio is planning on using a 6 1/2-furlong statebred handicap on the downhill turf course at Santa Anita on Saturday as a stepping-stone to the $2 million Breeders’ Cup Sprint.

A New York-bred won the first American Grade 1 turf race of 2025, and a New York-bred won the most recent American Grade 1 turf race. When it comes to the Breeders’ Cup Mile, a late-season surge is the way to go.

When New York-bred Spirit of St Louis won the Grade 1 Pegasus World Cup Turf in January, New York-bred Rhetorical was several months away from his 2025 debut. Spirit of St Louis after winning the Grade 1 Turf Classic in May steadily lost his edge and now won’t race again until 2026.

The always-muddled picture for the five-furlong Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf Sprint, which traditionally draws an overflow cast, began to clear up over the weekend when five stakes that could produce starters were run in North America.

Barnavara, the narrow winner of Sunday’s Group 1 Prix de l’Opera at Longchamp Racecourse in Paris, will not be sent to Del Mar for the $2 million Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Turf on Nov. 1.

Trainer Jessica Harrington said on Tuesday that Barnavara will not race again this year, and is scheduled to be sold at auction in December.

“I don’t think we will be going” to Del Mar, she said. “I think she had a hard enough race. I don’t want to end up with a bad run.

“She’s done very well this year.”

The North American preliminaries came to a close last weekend, clarifying the division, and while the Group 1 Dewhurst Stakes at Newmarket in England comes Saturday, we’ve probably already found the favorite for the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf.

Aidan O’Brien, who has trained the last three winners of the Juvenile Turf, and who has won the race seven times, as of Tuesday had six horses still among the possible final entrants for the Dewhurst. But his prime candidate for Del Mar, Puerto Rico, ran this past Sunday.

Even if Thorpedo Anna’s misfire last weekend softened the field for the Breeders’ Cup Distaff, the trainer of Argentina Group 1 winner Sarawak Rim acknowledged his filly faces a tall order.

“Distaffs are always tough,” Ignacio Correas said. “There’s not an easy Distaff.”

Correas would know, having won the 2019 Distaff with Blue Prize, an Argentine who was in the U.S. more than two years and won two U.S. Grade 1s prior to winning the Distaff at Santa Anita in her second try in the race. This year is different, even if the field does not include 2024 winner Thorpedo Anna.