Last chapters are tough to write. You can count the great movie endings on a couple of hands. Terry Malloy staggering, bloody, into a waterfront warehouse. A dead-eyed Michael Corleone alone in his Tahoe compound. "Shane! Shane!" "Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown."

So it is with professional athletes, and especially Thoroughbred jockeys. They have no Champions Tour, no Icecapades, no cushy coaching jobs waiting in the twilight. They are either old and working or old and not, without much in between.

NEW YORK - Some good news emerged from Thursday's Breeders' Cup board meeting, especially in the "no news is good news" department.

This was the meeting where it was widely expected that Santa Anita would be named the permanent home of the Cup starting in 2011, a divisive and unpopular idea that has gained little traction outside the Cup's boardroom but a lot of criticism from fans, horsemen and other track operators. Maybe Thursday's inaction on this front is only a temporary reprieve, but I'd like to think the group is having second thoughts.

ARCADIA, Calif. - The Santa Anita season went out last weekend with the bang of Tuscan Evening and Bourbon Bay, two bona fide stars with travelogue names, accompanied by the whimper of its predictably disappointing business figures in face of factors both self-inflicted and imposed.

TUCSON, Ariz. - All men are created equal, it says here, but not when it comes to public speaking.

Two who aren't are Bennett Liebman, executive director of the Government Law Center at Albany Law School, and Jeff Gural, the New York real estate magnate who built and operates Tioga Downs in southern New York between Elmira and Binghamton, and is rebuilding Vernon Downs between Utica and Syracuse.

ARCADIA, Calif. - They can knock down the grade, from one to whatever, and squeeze the life out of the purse to a Reagan-era low. What they can't do to the San Juan Capistrano, though, is rob the race of a history that smacks you in the face with every visit to its home at Santa Anita Park.

NEW YORK - If you Google "New York City OTB closing," you will get "about 152,000" search results, seemingly one for each time the beleaguered and now bankrupt bet-taker has threatened to close its doors for good. The latest such deadline is Sunday, though by the time you read this it may have been pushed back yet again. That's the way it has always worked in the past - but maybe, just maybe, it's time to let it shut down, 39 years and 10 days after it started.

ARCADIA, Calif. - Veteran Hall of Famers like Ron McAnally are notorious for their patience. They know when to push and when to sit quietly in the weeds, waiting for the wheel to turn. Luck, if nothing else, always changes.

This was supposed to be a quiet week. It is the lull between the last of the major Kentucky Derby preps and the final madness of Derby Week itself. It is the afterglow of Zenyatta's latest appearance, a time for reflection on what might lie ahead. It is the end of Santa Anita and the beginning of Hollywood Park, a bittersweet transition even in the best of times.

And then Tony Dutrow fired Edgar Prado.

Now, trainers get mad at jockeys all the time, as do horseplayers, their agents, their wives, and their girlfriends. Their pets and children tend to give them a pass.

NEW YORK - Personal Ensign, who died Thursday at the age of 26, will be remembered as one of American racing's greatest fillies or mares on three different and equally spectacular counts: her undefeated career, her dramatic victory in the 1988 Breeders' Cup Distaff, and her astounding performance as a broodmare.

ARCADIA, Calif. - As this is written, Zenyatta was getting ready to scatter another bunch of fillies and mares like a flock of hapless barn sparrows in Friday's Apple Blossom at Oaklawn Park. This would make her 2 for 2 as a reigning champion this year and, hopefully, looking for a whole lot more to do.