ARCADIA, Calif. - Mike Pegram remembers the details as if they happened yesterday, instead of 15 years ago, as he stood in the paddock at Gulfstream Park, a raw rookie with a horse in the 1992 Breeders' Cup Sprint. The players in Pegram's little drama included jockey Eddie Delahoussaye, trainer Bob Baffert, and the 5-year-old gelding Thirty Slews, whose odds were blinking at 18-1. As the scene opens, Baffert is firing on all cylinders:

Eddie D.: What's the matter with you, Bob? You're nervous.

Baffert: We can win this thing!

Eddie D.: Don't you think I know that?

TUCSON, Ariz. - Of all the intriguing places I visit, Kentucky is by far the most entrancing.

There is nothing like Lexington in the fall. Beautiful weather, superb horses, Keeneland and Lexington's downtown racetrack, The Red Mile, and, perhaps most fascinating of all, the Kentucky Racing Authority.

It is a work of wonder. And its latest performance, the Biancone Ballet, is a work of art.

WASHINGTON - When horse breeders gather Saturday at Laurel Park for the Maryland Million, a pall will hang over the normally festive event. People who have spent their lives raising horses know that their once-vibrant industry is declining, if not dying. And they are pained when they hear critics say that the state shouldn't try to help their business. That was the conclusion of an editorial in The Washington Post this summer. Titled "Sentiment vs. Horse Sense," it was the latest of the newspaper's many jeremiads about the evil of slot machines.

ARCADIA, Calif. - Call her the Great White North, as reliable as a Canadian sunset and solid as the Canadian dollar, which as of Monday morning could buy $1.02 worth of its cowering American equivalent.

Monashee is a 5-year-old gray mare gone almost white. She is named for a Canadian mountain range, and as of last Saturday, when she took the $125,000 Ballerina Stakes at Hastings in Vancouver with one leg tied behind her back, Monashee has won 11 straight stakes races in western Canada, dating back to June of 2006. One more and she gets her own province.

NEW YORK - When New York's Republican legislators scheduled yet another public hearing last week with the bidders for the New York racing franchise, they were attempting to reopen a process that had seemed to end last month when Gov. Eliot Spitzer recommended a 30-year extension for the New York Racing Association. The Republicans' general, Senate majority leader Joe Bruno, had said he thought the other bidders deserved further consideration to be involved with the operation of the tracks, citing the attractive involvement of powerful racing and real-estate companies in those groups.

ARCADIA, Calif. - At the rate the Breeders' Cup is going, don't be surprised if the 11 races planned for the two-day Monmouth Park blowout later this month are someday increased to embrace even more specialized divisions.

ARCADIA, Calif. - This time of year, the steady drumbeat of anticipation for the Breeders' Cup can become deafening, as if the game has been reduced to a finite number of races taking place on a single, sanctified afternoon. It should be noted, then, that Saturday's racing at two key regional tracks offers a momentary respite from all things BC.

At Laurel Park, beginning just past noon, the 22nd version of the Maryland Million will play out in 12 acts, crowned by the $300,000 Maryland Million Classic at 1 3/16 miles.

ARCADIA, Calif. - If there ever was any doubt that it takes a thick skin, helmet, and chest protector to play the horses on a regular basis, last weekend offered indisputable proof.

The carnage began on Friday at Keeneland with the meltdown of Spinaway winner Irish Smoke in the Alcibiades (last at 13-10), and continued the next day at Belmont Park, where Hopeful winner Majestic Warrior phoned in a feeble sixth in the Champagne Stakes, at a buck-oh-five on the dollar.

ARCADIA, Calif. - The Lava Man saga reaches a crossroads on Sunday, when the Cinderella gelding takes his first steps along a path significantly different from the one he has traveled these last three remarkable years.

The old Lava Man - the three-time Hollywood Gold Cup and two-time Santa Anita Handicap version - would have been hip-deep in the thick of last Saturday's $500,000 Goodwood, mixing it up with horses intent on making it to the $5 million Breeders' Cup Classic.

NEW YORK - For a few days last month, it seemed that the long and bloody battle for the New York Racing Association franchise was finally over. On Sept. 3, Gov. Eliot Spitzer announced his recommendation that NYRA be granted a 30-year franchise extension and released a memorandum of understanding under which NYRA would relinquish its claim to ownership of the tracks and the land beneath them.