The retirement last week of So You Think closed the book on one of the most extraordinary racing careers in recent years, one that is likely to look remarkably ambitious and sporting a generation from now when other, more conventionally campaigned champions have been virtually forgotten.

A family attending the centennial celebration of the Alameda County Fair on Thursday afternoon could have stuck around for the last of eight Thoroughbred races and still had plenty of time to make the Temptations concert at the Safeway Amphitheater on the grounds at 7 o’clock.

“Conveniently located three miles east of the Los Angeles International Airport, Hollywood Park, formerly a thoroughbred racetrack, is the largest undeveloped parcel of land in the Greater Los Angeles area.”

– recent press release from Merit Property Management

If the land developers and their management company could just hold off with the shovels, the rest of us would like to squeeze in one more Hollywood Gold Cup on Saturday afternoon, especially since the last anyone checked Hollywood Park is not “formerly” a racetrack just yet.

Thanks for that.

Henry Moreno is hardly shy about taking a swing at the Hollywood Gold Cup with a longshot. He tried to win the track’s big one in 1970 with Neurologo, an Argentine horse prone to occasional flights of fancy, and in 1971 with Comtal, a dead-game closer who battled through an athlete’s aches and pains.

I’ve been inhaling a lot of horse stories lately. No, not the kid’s stuff, like “Black Beauty” or C. W. Anderson or even Ralph Moody’s seminal “Come On, Seabiscuit,” which I read to death before I was 12. And not the classic racetrack lore spun by Damon Runyon in “Little Miss Marker” or John Taintor Foote in “The Look of Eagles” or Joe Palmer writing about anything.

Bob Baffert noticed right away.

“You’ve lost weight,” he told Ron McAnally. “Lookin’ good.”

“Twenty pounds so far,” McAnally replied. “You scared me.”

PRIMM, Nev. – Doug O’Neill has been the face of horse racing for the better part of two months.

Luckily for Luke Nolen, Australia is a big country. There are plenty of places to hide, beginning with the Australian Outback, which is about two and a half million square miles of not a whole lot.

Eddie Delahoussaye was expecting the call. There was justifiable concern for his health. After all, a jockey usually does not get a stakes race or a memorial award named in his honor unless he has suffered some terrible trauma, like dying, preferably in public and in proximity to a racehorse.

This is how it went with George Woolf, Juan Gonzalez, Mike Venezia, Avelino Gomez, Mark Villa, and Michael Rowland. All were killed in the line of duty, all memorialized with awards or races.

In a given season over the past 25 years, the winners of the Mother Goose Stakes in New York and the Hollywood Oaks out West could have been selected from a list of 3-year-old fillies that includes Rachel Alexandra, Go for Wand, Hollywood Wildcat, Sky Beauty, Manistique, Serena’s Song, Lakeway, Meadow Star, Open Mind, Sharp Cat, and Gorgeous.