ARCADIA, Calif. - By now the reader understands that anything written about horse racing at Santa Anita Park is highly speculative. The voting patterns of the schizophrenic community are more easily predicted.

There have been assurances, however, that the racing surface work being done on Thursday morning - as this was written - will allow competition to resume by Saturday at the latest. Beyond that, hopes are high that racing can continue uninterrupted come hell or high water (hell being preferred to high water) through the end of the meet on April 20.

NEW YORK - Betting on the Kentucky Derby Future Wager has been in a steady decline the last three years, and there's no reason to think anything will be different with this year's pools, the first of which opened Thursday and ends Sunday.

TUCSON, Ariz. - "We are for the regulation of anabolic steroids, but not the banning of them. Steroids can be a good therapeutic medication."

ARCADIA, Calif. - Is it Super Sunday already? Man, I've got to do some serious nacho shopping. Time again for every living creature - those above ground anyway - to drop in their tracks and bow in the direction of the Super Bowl. This time Mecca is Phoenix, where a team from New York that plays in New Jersey will try to beat a team from Boston that calls itself New England, if only to appease Vermont.

NEW YORK - It's one thing for the New York racing industry and Democratic politicians to continue blaming state Sen. Joe Bruno for singlehandedly blocking an agreement for racing in the state to continue and move forward. The New York Racing Association has been at war with Bruno for months now, and the Democrats are locked into a bigger struggle against him to wrest control of the senate, the only branch of state government that the Republicans rule, and by a majority that has shrunk to just two seats.

NEW YORK - Decades from now, schoolchildren clutching their electronic Daily Racing Forms may ask how a horse named Bob Black Jack could have run six furlongs in 1:06.53 at Santa Anita back in the winter of '08, the fastest of what must be more than a million Thoroughbred races that have been run at the distance on Planet Earth.

ARCADIA, Calif. - In the wake of his impressive maiden victory at Turfway Park in January 2007, Slew's Tizzy had his people in the Greg Fox stable buzzing with excitement. They were convinced the handsome son of Tiznow was going to make headlines soon.

"He did," recalled assistant trainer Genie Mittleider. "But it wasn't quite what we had in mind."

ARCADIA, Calif. - At the top of the stretch in last Saturday's Sunshine Millions Classic, Buzzards Bay and jockey Jose Valdivia took what appeared to be a brief lead in the million-dollar event, igniting memories of the great promise once held for the handsome chestnut.

Valdivia himself, freighted with personal torment, was competing for the first time in more than a week. But somehow, head down and driving, he was focused on the job and doing it well. Between the two of them, horse and rider, there was enough drama to fill the front page. Do you believe in miracles?

ARCADIA, Calif. - Before last Saturday's sixth version of the Sunshine Millions at Santa Anita mercifully fades from the mind, a few memories linger.

The "California vs. Florida" banner draped on the grandstand facade said it all. It is a natural rivalry, of course, and the stakes were high. By the end of the eight-race program, horses bred in the Sunshine State had won seven - a real squeaker - which means that Florida retains possession of O.J. Simpson for another year.

On Sunday at Turf Paradise, in the ninth and final race of the day, an 8-year-old gelding named Runnin' the River making his 46th start will take on a field of $10,000 claimers, most of them bone-tired, dead-game veterans who would just as soon be munching pasture grass than performing for the pleasure of a pari-mutuel audience.

Still, they keep showing up, which makes them a perfect bunch for the John Stewart Tribute Purse.