ARCADIA, Calif. - During a practice session last Tuesday in Aspen, Australian superpipe snowboarder Torah Bright fell while attempting a Switch Backside 720, banged her head and suffered a concussion. Two days later, back in the pipe, Bright went down again, this time trying a Crippler 540. She was briefly hospitalized with what was suspected to be another concussion, then released, but withdrew from this weekend's Winter X Games.

ARCADIA, Calif. - Sometimes the racing game, patriarchal to its core, boils down to a history of fathers and sons. That is why watching Marty Jones and Don Valpredo at work with a good horse is so much fun.

ARCADIA, Calif. - Long before someone came up with the idea of commingling the racing assets of California and Florida into a Sunshine Millions concept, Leonard Lavin had it nailed.

Year after year, Lavin would churn out fine product at his Glen Hill Farm, across the road from Florida's famed Ocala Stud, where Rough'n Tumble, sire of Dr. Fager, once did business. Lavin would then send the best of his runners to California, after which their names became known as Convenience, Relaunch, Uniformity, Header Card, Top Rung, Repriced, and Carload, among many others.

The sky is falling on New Jersey racing.

That's not Chicken Little's view. It's mine and that of others in racing who have read the draft suggestions of a report being submitted to new Gov. Chris Christie.

The 20-page draft precedes a final version to be submitted to the governor, and its recommendations include the possible closing of the Meadowlands, the nation's top harness track and home of the Hambletonian, harness racing's Kentucky Derby.

NEW YORK - A visit to Santa Anita last weekend was an instant cure for this Easterner's winter blues and racing blahs, and it had nothing to do with the results announced at Monday's Eclipse Awards. The three ingredients in the restorative tonic were rediscovering the pleasures of a day at Santa Anita, the impromptu announcement at the track that Zenyatta will race again this year, and the confirmation that the track is replacing its beleaguered racing surface this summer, quite possibly with a return to dirt.

ARCADIA, Calif. - At the Eclipse Awards Dinner on Monday night in Beverly Hills, racing fan and congressman Dennis Cardoza, a Democrat of central California, welcomed the audience to the otherwise benign climate of his home state, saying, "For those of you who aren't here tonight, and watching across America, it rained so hard here today that they canceled the races at Santa Anita."

ARCADIA, Calif. - Just in case anyone was wondering, it has happened before. The drama of the Horse of the Year announcement, coming down to a pair of highly worthy candidates who never met on the field of battle, played out in the same Beverly Hills neighborhood a quarter of a century ago.

NEW YORK - Racing fans spend the first trimester of each year obsessively speculating about who's going to win the Kentucky Derby, carefully analyzing even the most obscure prep races and vying to be among the first to board the eventual winner's bandwagon. Yet when given the chance to wager genuine currency through the parimutuel system on these early opinions, they sit on their wallets.

ARCADIA, Calif. - Instead of going out with the bang of a public auction and the fresh slate of new ownerships, the bankruptcy resolution of Magna Entertainment Corporation's holdings of Santa Anita Park, Golden Gate Fields, and Gulfstream Park has ended with the whimper of intramural accountancy and the rearrangement of deck chairs after a very rocky voyage.

NEW YORK - The release of the 2009 World Thoroughbred Rankings on Tuesday came saddled with the usual dose of controversy. No one in his right mind could deny Sea the Stars his world championship rating, although his trainer, John Oxx, questioned whether 136 is "a true reflection" of his ability. That rating was the highest since Peintre Celebre was awarded a 137 in 1997, although most observers, this one included, would rate Sea the Stars a superior horse.