There is a very good chance some very memorable moments will emerge from the two days of Breeders’ Cup races at Santa Anita next Friday and Saturday. You can’t stuff so much money and talent into 15 races and expect otherwise. Having witnessed all but one Breeders’ Cup in person since its debut in 1984 (I passed on Monmouth in 2007 to deal with wildfire evacuation warnings back home), I can only hope that this year’s 29th running will add fresh tales to these vivid recollections:

LAS VEGAS – Breeders’ Cup is a week away, but the race and sports books here are busy getting ballrooms ready, big screens hooked up, and extra betting machines wired in for the horseplayers on the way.

It is probably best to get this out of the way early, before the real fun starts. Each year, the Breeders’ Cup is defined by the horses who don’t run as much as by those who do. Then comes the end of the big day, and the names of the absent are all but forgotten, relegated to the mists of time recalled only in terms of, “What if?”

There was heartbreak from the start, when the first Breeders’ Cup Turf in 1984 at Hollywood Park lost both John Henry, the American superstar, and Seattle Song, Europe’s leading light, to injuries after pre-entries were taken.

On the wall of the women’s restroom in the National Museum of Horseracing in Newmarket, England, there is a life-sized poster of Frankie Dettori, posed barechested, clutching a whip, and staring off into the distance as if regally focused on worlds yet to conquer.

The intrigue of the Breeders’ Cup lies in its variety, in its heady mix of ownerships, jockey styles, breeding pools, and geographic identities. However, nothing stimulates conversation more than the hubris of a Thoroughbred trainer trying to pull off a mini-miracle on the national stage.

There have been only a handful of training teams who have gone through what Henry Cecil’s crew are going through this week, as their stable star Frankel approaches the final race of his perfect career in the $2.1 million Qipco Champion Stakes on Saturday at England’s showcase Ascot Racecourse, an hour or so west of London.

LAS VEGAS – A week ago Thursday, Oct. 11, 0.66 of an inch of rain fell here, breaking the record for the date and pushing the city over the annual average of 3.13 inches of rain.

Rumors, being mostly false yet highly entertaining, have a tendency to linger like mold. Paco Gonzalez, according to such rumors, has been on his way out as a trainer, having seen his stable shrink to a handful of horses over the past several years, a dizzying descent from the heights he enjoyed handling the likes of Free House, Came Home, and Bien Bien.

WASHINGTON – Racing fans in the U.S. have reason to believe that the Thoroughbred species is in decline. This year’s anticlimactic Triple Crown series was the fifth in a row in which the nation’s 3-year-olds were sub-par by historical standards. When the Breeders’ Cup is run next month, the year-end championship events are unlikely to produce any winners considered superstars.

Welcome to this year’s badgering of the legendary Roger Attfield over when in the name of all things Canadian is he going to finally win the dominion’s premier event for older Thoroughbreds, these days referred to as the Pattison Canadian International.