TUCSON, Ariz. - An insult 29 years ago has given North American racing one of the world's largest auctions of all-breed equine art, and has given scores of worthy kids from racing families a chance at a college education.

The affront came at the old Canyon Hotel in Palm Springs, Calif. Palm Springs flourishes, but the Canyon is long gone.

It was the scene of the annual convention of Harness Tracks of America in 1975, and two weeks before it was to start I received a call from the convention manager of the hotel.

NEW YORK - A National Thoroughbred Racing Association task force has spent the last eight months studying why national betting handle is increasing while revenues for purses and track operations are declining. While much of the information in the final version of its 110-page report released Friday is interesting and overdue, the report unfortunately settles on the wrong culprits.

POMONA, Calif. - As far as they are concerned, the seven young guns going forth on Sunday in the Barretts Juvenile Stakes at Pomona's Fairplex Park are every bit the equals of the posh bunch getting all the attention on the same afternoon at Belmont Park in the race simply known as the Futurity.

Granted, it is likely that no one has heard of anything in the Barretts field outside their immediate families. And, no, the folks at the Breeders' Cup probably won't be on the phone right after the race is official.

POMONA, Calif. - Hurricane Frances cost 18 lives and did as much as $10 billion in damage to Florida and south Georgia when it made landfall in early September. The ferocious storm rendered more than three million homes without power, caused more than $54 million in citrus crop losses, and even wreaked havoc at the Kennedy Space Center, where a launch was canceled and a thousand panels were ripped from the exterior of the landmark Vehicle Assembly Building.

Oh, yes. And the nation's leading jockey fell off a ladder and broke his left wrist.

NEW YORK - Horseplayers who think they know what they're doing reserve a special contempt for their racetrack brethren who pick horses because of their names. Hardworking handicappers who spend hours quantifying and deconstructing past performances cannot help but feel the deepest scorn for yahoos who base their selections upon the coincidence that a horse was given the same name as the family cat or something adorable a grandchild once said.

Except, of course, when we do it ourselves.

INGLEWOOD, Calif. - In the wake of Miss Loren's 34-1 upset in the Clement L. Hirsch Handicap at Del Mar last month, trainer Luis Seglin predicted that the news would be greeted with considerable fanfare back home in Buenos Aires. He was right.

"All of a sudden I was a very important man, and everybody remembered me," Seglin said, still laughing at the thought. "There was a lot of nationalistic feelings."

NEW YORK - The organizations involved in the plan to put Tim Smith in charge of the New York Racing Association got one thing right at the very end of the doomed process: They made the formal announcement that the plan had failed on the Saturday of Labor Day weekend, a day renowned in the news and public-relations businesses as the ultimate burial ground for stories you hope will attract as little attention as possible.

POMONA, Calif. - The "Jay" is for Jan. The "Em" stands for Mace. And the "Ess" is Samantha, but everybody calls her Sam. Oh, and just in case no one noticed, last week the North American racing game belonged to the stable called Jay Em Ess, lock, stock, and two smoking barrels.

On Labor Day, their uncharted 3-year-old colt Love of Money left a solid field littered all over the Philadelphia Park stretch with his 8 1/2-length victory in the $750,000 Pennsylvania Derby. Smarty who?

CARLSBAD, Calif. - The last of 43 postcard sunsets put a sad glow on Del Mar's farewell card Wednesday, when 15,132 fans showed up for one last round of Del Margaritas. It was a season to remember, for a while anyway, from the Pacific Classic exacta of Pleasantly Perfect-Perfect Drift, to the closing-day Futurity fireworks provided by Declan's Moon and Roman Ruler.

These things also happened:

NEW YORK - Upstate editorialists and politicians have spent the last few days speculating about why attendance was down 8 percent at the 36-day Saratoga meeting that ended Monday. New York State's attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, whose office absurdly took credit for business gains early in the meet, has yet to claim similar responsibility for the closing-week declines, but nearly every other possible culprit is being analyzed and debated.