NEW YORK – If Zenyatta wins the Breeders’ Cup Classic on Saturday, finishing her career 20 for 20 with a victory over the best horses she has ever faced at the iconic American showcase of 10 furlongs on the dirt at Churchill Downs, it will be a spectacular moment in all of racing history. It would of course also rightly make her a virtually unanimous choice as the nation’s Horse of the Year, an honor for which she finished second in the balloting in 2008 and 2009.

It’s a good thing American racing keeps a seat warm for John Gosden. Looks like he’ll be back again this week with more than a decent shot to win a Breeders’ Cup race for the third straight year.

NEW YORK – Led by Frankel, this year’s crop of European 2-year-olds looks like the strongest and deepest in many a year. Their impact should be felt in the Breeders’ Cup juvenile races, even though none of the best European 2-year-olds will be at Churchill Downs next week.

LAS VEGAS – The year of the underdog got back on track last week as they went 9-5 against the spread and now stand at 61-38-4 (61.6 percent after tossing out the pushes) on the season as we approach the halfway point.

Beep . . . beep . . . beep . . .

We interrupt this regularly scheduled NFL picks column to bring you a Breeders’ Cup update as this is a horse racing publication and the sport’s two-day festival of championship races is coming up next weekend, and it’s a big deal in Vegas, even during football season.

Liberian Freighter likes to cut it close, real close, like he did this summer in the Harry F. Brubaker Stakes at Del Mar, and then more recently in Hollywood Park’s version of the Oak Tree Mile. The verdict each time was a nose, and it doesn’t figure to get any easier on Saturday, when Liberian Freighter could go postward the most skittish of favorites in the $100,000 California Cup Mile.

During a year of mid-term elections, like this one, political junkies can get a fix just about any time they want, in any sort of wrapping, from March straight through the summer and into the fall. Election Day, for the true political junkie, is a bummer of a total letdown.

INGLEWOOD, Calif. - They get no headlines, no groupies, not even an extra oat. On a chess board, they'd be pawns. In a battle, they'd be the Marines, over the top first and out of the trenches, anonymous heroes, but heroes for sure.

Sarbonne is a big, good-looking son of Seeking the Gold out of a Cherokee Run mare. He is 3 years old, and he has run four times so far without winning, which pulls him up about $20,000 short of the $27,000 Ann and Jerry Moss paid for him as a 2-year-old last year in Florida.

Now that the game has reached the two-week countdown to the glittering spectacle known as the Breeders’ Cup, it is time to pretend, at least for a fortnight, that all is well in Thoroughbred horse racing world.

There will be plenty of psychological aids. A 24-hour Zenyatta watch is keeping track of her every blink and twitch, subjecting the big mare to a scrutiny unprecedented in her three long and fully accessible seasons at the track. A crew from “60 Minutes” was at the barn the other day, which of course means she must be the real thing.

LAS VEGAS – NFL favorites – and the bettors who back them – bounced back a little last week.

A little.

After the first five weeks of the NFL season saw favorites fail to post a composite winning record against the spread as they went 7-8-1, 5-10-1, 5-11, 4-9 (the Patriots-Dolphins game closed pick-em, so no “favorite”), and 5-9, the chalk went 7-5-2 last week as the sports books here suffered their first losing weekend. But, as you can tell from the numbers, it didn’t put much of a dent in their bottom line so far on the season.

You would think matters regarding the best 2-year-old in Great Britain would have been settled cleanly last weekend in the Dewhurst Stakes at Newmarket when the Royal Lodge winner, Frankel, easily defeated the Middle Park winner, Dream Ahead. Like the man says, “Scoreboard, baby!” Frankel is unbeaten. Dream Ahead, obviously, is not, having lost to Frankel, among others, last Saturday afternoon in the Dewhurst Stakes at Newmarket.