DEL MAR, Calif. - It's been a rocky summer at Del Mar. The only sure things have been Ziggy Marley and Zenyatta. Business has been mixed, with about the same number of sunburned faces showing up but spending less. Horsemen and horses have been used once again as guinea pigs in the ongoing evolution of racing surfaces and medication rules. Fish tacos have lost their thrill.

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - On the first Saturday in May, both the tote board and the prognosticators said that only three horses could win the Kentucky Derby: Big Brown at 2-1, Colonel John at 9-2 ,and Pyro at 5-1 were the only three in a 20-horse field sent off at less than 13-1 and together accounted for more than 50 percent of the win betting.

DEL MAR, Calif. - At about half past four on Wednesday afternoon, shortly after the start of the sixth race at Del Mar, North America's leading jockey found himself tumbling along a patch of hot Polytrack at the mouth of the six-furlong chute after his mount, Bella Dancer, decided to make an unscheduled left-hand turn.

SAN MATEO, Calif. - A pair of low-tech notices greeted a visitor to Bay Meadows last Sunday morning as a handful of horses galloped around the track and the crews of the early shift began their day.

The first, a flier taped to one of the columns fronting the grandstand entrance, read, "It's not too late to save Bay Meadows! Lawsuit will be heard Oct. 10, 2008. Your help and support is needed. Don't let the real estate developers get away with it."

TUCSON, Ariz. - Philosophical issues aside - philosophy runs second to psychology every time they meet - slot machines have carved American racing into two separate parts.

The issue now is not whether slots ruin the purity of racing, what's left of it, but whether racing can live without them.

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - Oceanologists reported last week that humpback whales are making a comeback, thanks to a ban on commercial hunting that had threatened them with extinction in recent years. The same cannot be said for another endangered species whose natural habitat is a glassed-in booth at American racetracks: currus notarius, or horse-racing writer.

DEL MAR, Calif. - On the evening of Friday, Dec. 3, 2004, Myra Truitt arrived to ride at Remington Park with her car loaded and ready for the road. The meet was wrapping up, and Truitt's introduction to Oklahoma racing had been tough. But she had made some contacts, and she was not about to give up on her plan to keep working her way east from California until she could land her dream job on a Kentucky Thoroughbred farm.

"I'd just turned 41 two days before that," Truitt recalled. "It was time to start thinking seriously about doing something other than being a jockey."

Michael Iavarone, whose IEAH Stable is Big Brown's majority owner, and Jess Jackson, Curlin's principal owner, will be seated a few tables apart as they wait to receive awards at Monday night's New York Turf Writers dinner here. So here's the plan: Let's page them both to take emergency phone calls, lure and lock them into a janitor's closet, and not let them out until they agree on a time and place to race their horses against each other.

DEL MAR, Calif. - Ron McAnally was horizontal, left leg elevated as per doctor's orders, while trying to recall the last time a horse nailed him with such force.

"I was real young, just grooming horses for Reggie," McAnally began, referring to his uncle, Reggie Cornell. "We were some place back east, and Reggie had a filly named Evening Tune, by Eight Thirty, for Harry James and Betty Grable. Real nice filly, too. I went up to her in the stall from behind to kind of give her a hug, and she got me good. Kicked me high on the right leg."

DEL MAR, Calif. - The gathering in the winner's circle following Sky Cape's victory in the La Jolla Handicap last Saturday included most of the cast and crew from the glory days of Imperialism, who won a pair of tough Santa Anita stakes and finished third to Smarty Jones in the 2004 Kentucky Derby, then came back the following year to win the Pat O'Brien Handicap at Del Mar.