NEW YORK - More than 20 years ago, I had the dubious pleasure of living for an entire winter at a Holiday Inn in Miramar, Fla. The place was borderline shabby, but its chief attraction was that the rooms practically bumped up against the stretch turn at Calder Race Course, and you could walk out on to your tiny balcony in the morning to watch workouts.

ARCADIA, Calif. - Be careful what you wish for, or however it translates into French. Barely four months after returning to full-time competition in California, Brice Blanc found himself faced with that eternal conundrum of all jockeys in demand, with two good horses pointing for the same attractive race. Quel headache, non?

ARCADIA, Calif. - Leonard Dorfman went to work for Noble Threewitt in the fall 1947, not long after he was discharged from the Army. Dorfman recalls the Threewitt operation as being neat as a pin, low-key and closely attuned to every possible detail.

"If there was a mark on a horse that wasn't there the day before, Noble knew about it," Dorfman said. "I remember the first time I took a horse to the post for him. He started three horses that day and won all three."

NEW YORK - Horseplayers are understandably jaded about the battle for the New York racing franchise that expires at year's end, figuring that there's going to be a daily double to bet on Jan. 1 and that it doesn't much matter who's sitting in the executive offices when the gates open.

It turns out they have more than a little self-interest in the matter. According to the Ad Hoc Committee report on the three franchise bids that was finally released Wednesday, that daily double is going to pay off differently depending on who's in charge.

ARCADIA, Calif. - Upon his election last year for a third term as president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenka proudly announced that he had received 93.5 percent of the vote. A few months later, Lukashenka himself admitted that the actual figure was 82.6 percent, and that the higher number was fabricated in an attempt to curry favor with European democracies. Nice try.

TUCSON, Ariz. - Horse racing's buzzwords in 2006 were "synthetic tracks."

There was a multimillion-dollar rush to build them, mandates to do so, unbridled enthusiasm that they were the answer to injuries and early retirement.

All that has been muted a bit by assorted problems. Now a new buzz sweeps the sport, and it holds huge promise.

It is out-of-competition testing.

ARCADIA, Calif. - Consider for a moment all the things Noble Threewitt has seen.

He was first licensed as a Thoroughbred trainer in 1931, at the age of 20, and began winning races at Agua Caliente in Tijuana, where the swinging class of Southern California migrated each weekend to fill the posh casino and play the ponies. In March of 1932, Threewitt watched Phar Lap train each morning, trotting up and down the surrounding hills, and then run to his Australian reputation by winning the $100,000 Agua Caliente Handicap.

NEW YORK - The announcement Friday that only one new Eclipse Award will be added to the lineup of championships for 2007 was met with surprise and disappointment in some quarters, given that as many as seven new championship divisions had been proposed and that several new Breeders' Cup races have been added this year. As a member of the committee that made the decision - Daily Racing Form co-presents the Eclipses with the National Thoroughbred Racing Association and the National Turf Writers Association - I can provide a window into some of the thinking behind it.

ARCADIA, Calif. - It was pretty hard to hear above all the chatter last week, what with Anna Nicole going to her reward and that crazy astronaut chick on the prowl. But for those who dig deep into the Internet - or know someone who does - it was amazing to discover that Barbaro reached back from the dead to save seven horses.

ARCADIA, Calif. - Just because it's his 68th birthday on Saturday, don't expect Art Sherman's opposition in the San Carlos Handicap to roll over and play dead. Although it would be a nice gesture.

"I wouldn't turn it down," said Sherman, who will be running his stable star, Siren Lure.

It is more likely that Sherman and his 6-year-old gelding will have to earn every ounce of the $150,000 purse and the historical significance that goes along with winning California's longest-running and most venerable sprint.