ARCADIA, Calif. - After Rachel Alexandra dominated much of the U.S. racing season, it is finally Zenyatta's moment to take center stage. The 5-year-old mare, who has won all 13 of her races with a powerful late kick, will face males for the first time when she runs Saturday in the Breeders' Cup Classic.

Zenyatta is the biggest star in two days of racing at Santa Anita that include 14 stakes with more than $25 million in purse money. But there are substantial reasons to doubt that she can beat male rivals as Rachel Alexandra did in the spring and summer.

ARCADIA, Calif. - A week before the Breeders' Cup Classic, while on the way to the track at Hollywood Park for their final work, Mike Smith could be heard softly singing to Zenyatta in Spanish as they walked along the backstretch road.

"It's a song called 'Antes de Que Te Vayas,' " Smith said, "by Marco Antonio Solis. It means 'Before You Go,' and it's sort of about saying goodbye to someone you love and hoping they come back to you safe. I sing it to her every time I get on her. She keeps time to it when she walks."

ARCADIA, Calif. - It was late last Wednesday afternoon, and John Shirreffs was leaning against the shed row rail at his Santa Anita barn, pondering a question that pertained to what figures to be Zenyatta's final start in the $5 million Breeders' Cup Classic on Saturday at Santa Anita Park.

ARCADIA, Calif. - Go ahead, Go-Go. Do it again. I dare you.

Last year, over the very same ground and beneath the same blue California skies, Garrett Keith Gomez took the 25th running of the Breeders' Cup by the heels and shook about $3.3 million in change out of its pockets by winning 4 of the 14 races and the Bill Shoemaker Award as the leading jockey of the two-day festival.

NEW YORK - It turns out that the much-maligned Breeders' Cup Marathon was good for something after all: When the race was moved from Saturday to Friday this year, it made the first of two Breeders' Cup days a co-ed affair, banishing the title of "Filly Friday" that lasted only a year and would have been an embarrassment on a day when neither Rachel Alexandra nor Zenyatta were running.

ARCADIA, Calif. - Twenty years ago the stare was there, in the Florida twilight, as Charles Clay and Sunday Silence stood together at the top of the Thoroughbred world. They had just won the 1989 Breeders' Cup Classic, with help from Charlie Whittingham and Chris McCarron. But make no mistake, it was the man at the shank - a proud, glowering virtuoso of his craft - who had every bit as much to do with what happened that day.

ARCADIA, Calif. - It was late Sunday afternoon on the Santa Anita backstretch when both Pyro and Cocoa Beach were led out of their Godolphin stalls to trot along the stable road for the pleasure of a Breeders' Cup veterinarian. This was routine, since both horses had worked that morning, and the scene was quiet, lazy, and warm.

Still, neither assistant trainer Rick Mettee nor his right-hand man Henry Spiller were taking anything for granted. They were on the watch, like Secret Service agents scanning the crowd, as Pyro began his little inspection trot, off toward the grandstand.

Nearly a week before they begin to load them into the gate for the Breeders' Cup, the score stands at Godolphin 15, Juddmonte 8, Coolmore 7. That is the number of horses three of the world's most powerful outfits will have in the world's richest two-day race meeting.

NEW YORK - Get ready to hear the words champion and championships approximately 1,872 times during the week ahead, since the Breeders' Cup insists on calling its event the "World Championships," its two days of racing "Championship Friday" and "Championship Saturday," and all 14 of the race winners on those days "Breeders' Cup champions."

ARCADIA, Calif. - Seeing as he's a Tommy Bahama, Ray-Ban, Del Mar in summer, Scottsdale in winter kind of guy, Mike Pegram can be forgiven if he remembers in vivid detail the coldest of the cold Breeders' Cups.

"I was there in 1991 at Churchill Downs, and it was colder than hell," said Pegram, who was raised just across the river in Indiana. But hey, his friend Bobby Baffert was running his first horse in a Breeders' Cup, the filly Soviet Sojourn, so where else was Pegram supposed to be? Anyway, after a while, the cold wasn't so bad.