LOUISVILLE, Ky. - The Maktoum family of Dubai has been buying racehorses since 1976, dominating European racing in tandem with Britain's Coolmore group for nearly as long, and bringing their best horses to the Breeders' Cup since their popular Pebbles won the second running of the Turf back in 1985. It took until this year, though, after winning their first Triple Crown races and sending out Bernardini as the heavy favorite in the Classic, for their racing operations to become a hot-button story in the general American news media.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Regardless of how the races turn out, this 23rd edition of the Breeders' Cup at Churchill Downs Saturday will be a pivotal one in the history of the series on two fronts: the beginning of the synthetic-track era in American racing, and the migration of television coverage from NBC to ESPN.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - The sun was just beginning to make its feeble way over the distant horizon Thursday morning, as Bernardini emerged from the stakes barn to take his first steps over the Churchill Downs main track.

WASHINGTON - What's happening to standards in America? Grade inflation prevails at colleges and universities so that students won't suffer the indignity of getting a C. The point scale for the SAT exam is changed so that almost everybody gets a higher score. And now, the ultimate capitulation: The Breeders' Cup tries to make its Ultra Pick Six easier so that horseplayers won't be so frustrated.

LOUISVILLE, Calif. - By the end of business on Saturday, Corey Nakatani could be the name on everyone's lips, and for all the right reasons.

"Embattled" is too tame to describe Nakatani's history. "Operatic" might work better, conjuring up soaring heroics and grim tragedies. He is flawed and admits it, often suffering from self-inflicted wounds. And yet fate has dealt him the occasional hand that would make most people fold.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - If it hadn't been for the purple Breeders' Cup saddle towel draped over a line in front of his stall, T. H. Approval could have been mistaken for some lonesome shipper from Turfway Park, stuck at the end of a nearly deserted barn, just waiting to get the race over with and head back home.

TUCSON, Ariz. - Like them or despise them, slot machines will change the dynamics of horse racing in 2007 in a number of ways, some perhaps not anticipated.

With Ohio about to vote them in or out next Tuesday, with Pennsylvania's governor Ed Rendell signing them into law this week, with the survival of Maryland racing at stake without them in the face of this new competition next door, and with Yonkers Raceway clearly in a position to have an impact on the New York City area's Thoroughbred track business, the issue of purist unhappiness over slots at tracks is irrelevant.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Tom Hammond will be feeling like a displaced person Saturday afternoon as he stares down at the freshly chalked grass of Notre Dame Stadium. His head will be plugged into doing the NBC play-by-play of the game between the heavily favored Fighting Irish and the Tar Heels of North Carolina, but his heart will be at Churchill Downs, where the telecast of the Breeders' Cup World Championships will transpire.

WASHINGTON - Thoroughbred racing has regularly thwarted the aspirations of the richest princes, tycoons, and bluebloods - people whose money can buy success in any other endeavor. The late trainer Woody Stephens often used to say: "You can't buy this game."

ARCADIA, Calif. - Talk about yin and yang. The handoff from the Oak Tree Racing Association's closing day on Sunday at Santa Anita to the opening of the Bay Meadows Land Company's meeting at Hollywood Park on Wednesday represents the starkest contrast in California's current crop of racetrack operators.

Oak Tree is run by a group of horse owners who would like nothing more than to give every nickel they make to equine veterinary research and racing's various charitable organizations.