The elements of the Thoroughbred racing game are too vast and varied for a single person to make a fundamental difference, but Ramon Dominguez has come close.

His ascension through the ranks of the nation’s elite riders was accompanied by what could only be described as a singular grace under the intense pressure of riding more than 2,000 races a year. Horse racing does not expect its champions to ride like demons, dismount to the sound of catcalls and faint praise, and then treat the listener to a calm analysis full of disarming charm.

They were going wild in Aiken, gathered around their TV screens and watching their local hero, Palace Malice, out there on the lead under the colors of Aiken’s very own Dogwood Stable. You could hear the cheers coming from every corner of the horsey little South Carolina town, and what a beautiful sight it was – right up to the moment Palace Malice hit a wall at the top of the Kentucky Derby stretch and backed up to finish 12th.

Will someone please peek out of the curtains to see if the coast is clear? Any of those young hooligans still hanging around, trampling the lawn and playing their loud, rappity-rap music? Is it finally safe again for the adults to come out and play?

My 1-2-3 picks for the Belmont Stakes are the same 1-2-3 picks I made five weeks ago for the Kentucky Derby, even though they ran 11-1-3 instead of 1-2-3 and none of them won the Preakness. I swear I am not merely being stubborn. Let me explain.

[BELMONT STAKES: Live updates and video from Belmont Park]

LAS VEGAS – The good news for horseplayers this Saturday is that the Belmont is shaping up as a good betting race with a 14-horse field. There also is a competitive undercard and good racing from coast to coast.

The bad news, at least for the race book managers, is that the race book will be relatively empty compared with Derby Day and Preakness Day, because when there’s no Triple Crown on the line, the Belmont is just the headliner on another Saturday of racing.

A guy can get in trouble for forgetting an anniversary, only around this house that can mean the marking of a date entirely different from a specific Saturday in the foggy past when vows were exchanged and somebody kissed the bride.

There is a legitimate fear that without a Triple Crown on the line the 145th Belmont Stakes will be run Saturday at Belmont Park in a spirit of such widespread ennui that the names of Derby winner Orb and Preakness winner Oxbow by now hardly ring a bell. Oh well.

The Belmont perennially wins the prize as America’s most schizophrenic horse race. It can mean so much, or so little, depending entirely upon the turn of events in two other cities – one of which does not even have a major-league sports franchise – in the month leading up to New York’s most famous horse race.

On paper, it appears as if Dice Flavor got lost in the desert on the way to the Kentucky Derby.

A son of Scat Daddy out of a mare by Afleet, Dice Flavor was last seen in this hemisphere running off with the nine-furlong El Camino Real Derby on Feb. 16 at Golden Gate Fields. His victory by nearly four lengths was not particularly fast, at least by the standards of the figure folks, but it came with a bit of flair.

It will be difficult to worry too much over the loss of many of Hollywood Park’s stakes events, now that they’ve each arrived at their final runnings. Most of them will be remembered fondly for their occasional renewals of merit, when good horses rose to the moment and left a good taste. But a fair number of them already have undergone changes in name and distance, jumbling history in the process.

Trevor and Robin Denman were blissfully embedded amidst the charms of historic Stratford-upon-Avon, England’s literary Lourdes, when the news drifted across the Atlantic earlier this month that Hollywood Park was officially closing for business at the end of the year.