Before I get to thoughts on some of Saturday’s stakes action, a rant:

Horseplayers have to struggle and fight for every inch they get, but there are some routine services the industry should provide them without question or debate. For example, it should be a given that when a horse is disqualified, there should be some form of explanation to the betting public, a constituency that some track managements seem to forget extends far beyond the gates of their facilities and reaches to other tracks, simulcast emporiums, homes, and mobile phones everywhere.

No one should need any reminders that the training and racing of Thoroughbreds is a dangerous endeavor. We get them anyway.

On Thursday at Delaware Park, five jockeys went down like living dominoes on the far turn of the turf course when the lead horse slipped and fell. Three jockeys got up.

The Brits and Irish are starting to get excited about Aidan O’Brien’s steady march toward the record for most Grade 1 stakes wins in a season. They call them Group 1 over there, which is clearly a reference to the class system so deeply rooted in European culture. But never mind.

Most of us, finding ourselves awake at 3 a.m., wallow in Fitzgerald’s brooding idea that “in a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.” Then we turn over and struggle back to sleep.

Except for Bill Spawr. For Spawr, a trainer for more than 40 of his 77 years, by 3 a.m. he is well into a bright new working day, already prowling his stable, peering into the stalls of sleepy headed Thoroughbreds, deciding who gets to do what and when.

“Where’s the Ferris wheel?”

The question was not out of line. Eddie Truman stood in the long, skinny Los Alamitos walking ring and scanned the horizon while waiting to give his jock a leg up in the second race on opening day. All he saw were comfortable suburbs, a couple of mega-churches, and big-box stores in the distance.

It’s a roll of the dice naming a Thoroughbred after someone near and dear. If the horse is hopelessly slow, or runs in bottom-level claimers, that’s one thing. But bad things can happen, and sometimes do.

Then again, when the ending is happy, like it was in the Del Mar Juvenile Fillies Turf on closing day at Del Mar, spirits soar. Terra’s Angel, the winner, is a daughter of Drosselmeyer named for Terra Bibb, the daughter of co-owner Terry Eoff. Bibb was 36 when she died last May after battling brain cancer, but not before Terra’s Angel won a maiden race at Lone Star Park.

Pity the North American owner and trainer with a top-class 3-year-old on grass. A Breeders’ Cup title is rarely in their future. Neither is an Eclipse Award championship likely. Possession of such an animal, no matter how good, usually must be its own reward.

In the combined 66 runnings of the Breeders’ Cup Turf and Breeders’ Cup Mile, only four U.S.-trained 3-year-olds have carried the day. Neil Drysdale won one of each with War Chant and Prized, while Shug McGaughey took the Mile with Lure and LeRoy Jolley won the Turf with Manila.

In the wake of last week’s Travers, racing folks across the land were faced with the quandary of what to make of the messy 3-year-old male division. West Coast, the decisive winner of the Travers, left little doubt that at least at this point, he is the best in his division. But in an overall sense, West Coast’s strength of record, at least to date, is not quite as strong as some of his contemporaries. That is a significant point, and it introduces a not-so-insignificant measure of subjectivity into the discussion.

On a table in the trailer Jerry Hollendorfer and assistant Dan Ward use for their Del Mar stable office, a set of familiar red and white silks rested among the sales catalogs and overnights. Just outside, halfway down the Hollendorfer shed row, stall No. 49 was deeply bedded in fresh straw, but sat empty with no occupant in sight.

As poignant reminders go, it was hard to choose between them.

Steve Asmussen had to laugh. Gun Runner finally was getting his turn. Here he was, an overnight sensation two years in the making, suddenly hailed as the top horse in the nation in a poll that had been a one-note samba all year long.

“Guess we’ll have to crank up the bandwagon,” Asmussen said, enjoying the moment. “There’s plenty of room. Everyone’s welcome.”