Believe it or not, there has been another racetrack operating in California for the past couple of weeks equipped with a fully operational turf course and the participation of Hall of Fame personalities. And a Ferris wheel.

That would be the Sonoma County Fair at Santa Rosa, gateway to California’s wine country, where the 13-day meet concludes Sunday with the running of the $50,000 Cavonnier Juvenile Stakes at six furlongs.

Aleksei Avila, named for a gold medal Olympian from Belarus, sat on the steps of a neighbor’s RV in his shorts, a T-shirt, and his stockinged feet. A silver sticker in the shape of a paramedic’s badge was displayed prominently on his shirt. Two hours earlier, he had been pulled through the side window of his family’s burning trailer home by a Del Mar employee, and now Aleksei was taking a rueful inventory of his losses.

It’s that most wonderful time of the year again in American racing. Fish are jumping, the days are longer, the mercury is high, Del Mar and Saratoga are in full swing. This can all mean only one thing: It’s time for everyone in racing to start yelling at one another about medication again.

Alex Solis, raised on a farm outside Panama City, was asked earlier this week if he knew how many of his fellow countrymen had preceded him into North America’s Thoroughbred Racing Hall of Fame in Saratoga Springs. He answered in a heartbeat.

While everybody was waiting around to see the three Grade 1 stakes from Saratoga and the West Virginia Derby from Mountaineer, I wanted to see the amazing Uncle Todd in the $100,000 West Virginia Legislature Chairman’s Cup, the second race on last Saturday’s Mountaineer card.

There are certainly better horses in America than the 5-year-old son of Pennsylvania stallion Jump Start. I am not sure there are many faster horses.

Mark Casse was hardly predicting that his stable would run wild at Del Mar this summer, winning races left and right. He knew that bringing 40 horses west from places like Louisville and Toronto was an expensive gamble. And he was familiar enough with names like Baffert, Sadler, Hollendorfer, and O’Neill to recognize a lion’s den when he saw one.

The sixth race at Del Mar was underway last Friday, July 25, at around 6:30 p.m. Pacific as Gary Stevens settled into a meal of hospital food at Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, Calif. One thing did not necessarily have anything to do with the other, except for the fact that Stevens, his right knee finally replaced that morning after years of horseback abuse, also was tuned into the races at just the right moment to see his young friend and colleague, Drayden Van Dyke, go down in a three-horse pile on the backstretch of the Del Mar turf course.

So many things in racing don’t quite work out the way we would like. Horses’ careers are cut short by injury; they fail to hold their form from year to year; potentially compelling rivalries fizzle just as they’ve begun. It’s the nature of the game. It also makes it all the more heartening, and worthy of celebration, when things work out as well as could be hoped for, which is what will happen when Palace Malice and Will Take Charge step onto the Saratoga track Saturday afternoon to face off in the $1.5 million Whitney Stakes.

Let it never be said that Del Mar’s owners and trainers lack the stones to roll the dice. Even in the wake of three turf-course fatalities last Friday and Saturday and the suspension of grass racing Sunday, there were only two scratches among the 27 horses entered in the three Wednesday turf races already drawn, plus full fields of 10, eight, and 10 subsequently entered for the three grass races scheduled for Thursday and Friday.

I heard about the man with the giant bankroll long before I met him. Sometime in the 1990s, stories were being told about this mystery bettor at Parx Racing who had his own room and teller at the track. The handle numbers I was hearing sounded impossible.

When Toccet became a serious 2-year-old in the fall of 2002, I figured it was time to meet the owner – Philadelphia native Dan Borislow, the mystery bettor who, it turned out, was not all that mysterious.