Victor Espinoza was too busy on Wednesday heading to a doctor’s office to notice the name of Accelerate at the top of the 19 pre-entries for the $6 million Breeders’ Cup Classic on Nov. 3. It was just as well.

There will be parimutuel betting for the first time in the $450,000 Grand National Hurdle at Far Hills on Saturday afternoon, and don’t let anyone tell you it will be easy.

For starters, the field of nine going forth over 14 barriers and 2 5/8 miles will include five fresh invaders from foreign lands, undoubtedly lured by the romance of the New Jersey countryside, as well as a shot at the kind of money they rarely see at home.

“This game will humble kings,” Hall of Famer Nick Zito is fond of saying, and some racetracks reinforce that notion regularly, whether one trains horses as Zito does, or handicaps and wagers on them. This fall’s Keeneland meet has been that way for this handicapper, with winners being in short supply.

At roughly the midway point in the Keeneland meet, aiming to finish stronger, I went sifting through the Keeneland results looking for trends and statistics for use down the stretch. Those findings are below.

It’s not that Chad Summers can’t make up his mind about the right Breeders’ Cup race for Mind Your Biscuits. We’re not talking about an indecisive Hamlet here. He’s more like the kid at Christmas, staring at three tempting packages and being told he can open only one.

Pre-entries for the Nov. 2-3 Breeders’ Cup at Churchill Downs will be taken Monday. A horse can be pre-entered in a maximum of two Breeders’ Cup races, and five days out Summers and his partners were waiting for the world to take a few more turns before making their move.

It has been noted frequently in this space over the last few months, but it seems like every week offers us new reason to revisit the topic: Given the weakness of our male turf division, which currently finds Glorious Empire, a recent claimer – if a razor-sharp recent claimer – as the arguable leader, it’s scary to contemplate what a European shipper of some real quality might accomplish when he or she arrives here to compete come Breeders’ Cup time.

In December of 2015, the Harris polling company asked 2,252 adults to identify their favorite sport from a list of 20 athletic endeavors. Professional football led the pack with 33 percent support, followed by baseball’s 15 percent, and college football at 10 percent. Horse racing was named by 1 percent of those who responded, along with women’s soccer and men’s tennis.

Sure, the studs get all the headlines, with their flashy records and their pricey early retirement packages. But the health of the breed relies on quality mares, tomorrow’s moms. And if there ever was a weekend to be confident that the future is in good hands, the events of last Saturday and Sunday provided a reason to believe.

The star on the last big Saturday of Breeders’ Cup prep races was, for me, Complexity.

Complexity didn’t take down the day’s biggest purse or earn anywhere near the highest speed figure. But his very impressive victory in the Champagne Stakes at Belmont did more than set up an attractive East vs. West showdown in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile with American Pharoah Stakes and Del Mar Futurity winner Game Winner, which is plenty in itself. Complexity’s performance also set off reverberations that could have a major impact well into next year.

There is not much use in dramatic hand-wringing, and goodness knows this reporter is a keg half-full kind of guy. But there are few things more disheartening – at least in horse racing – than the sight of a four-horse field in a Grade 1 race at six furlongs on the main track contested on the threshold of the Breeders’ Cup that all but guarantees the winner not only a place in the starting field, but also a shot at a division title.

The ripples from a stellar performance dropped into racing’s vast pond never travel far before they lap against the shores of a proud breeder.

Wow. How about that for a pretentious way of getting into the backstories of Discreet Lover, winner of the Jockey Club Gold Cup last Saturday at odds of 45-1, and Liam the Charmer, the winning favorite in the John Henry Turf Championship at Santa Anita on Sunday.