OZONE PARK, N.Y. - For most of us, the melody of last weekend's eventful 20th Breeders' Cup still lingers. But Cash Asmussen, for some time now, has been focusing on the 21st Breeders' Cup, to be run on Oct. 30, 2004, at Lone Star Park in Grand Prairie, Texas, a suburb of Dallas.
DEL MAR, Calif. - They started arriving last Sunday, horses by the score, some of them singed, most of them scared, and all of them lucky to be alive after fleeing from the path of the fires burning helter-skelter through the eastern reaches of San Diego County.
ARCADIA, Calif. - A Breeders' Cup at Santa Anita Park, with its early, made-for-TV post time, means chili and beer for breakfast. It means SWAT teams and mariachis in the paddock gardens; hazy, smoke-filled skies; nightmare traffic; and a long line at the Seabiscuit statue for photo ops at the end of the day.
It also means that Richard Mandella will have a very good time.
LOS ANGELES - Since you spend half your time in Los Angeles sitting in freeway traffic, your mind has the opportunity to wander. While waiting for the 20th year of Breeders' Cup races to be run at Santa Anita on Saturday, it was hard not to think back over the past two decades of Cup races and marvel at how many great individual races the series has produced. Here is one racegoer's highly subjective list of the very best of each division.
ARCADIA, Calif. - The Breeders' Cup World Thoroughbred Championships have a 19-year history of producing dramatic upsets. Longshots such as Arcangues ($269.20), Wild Again ($64.60), and last year's Classic winner, Volponi ($89), are as much a part of the event's lore as the superstars who have won it.
ELMONT, N.Y. - Victory by a longshot in Breeders' Cup competition is not a great surprise. With horses coming from all parts of the world, and with training schedules carefully adjusted for these races, unexpected results often follow.
That is why we've seen winners such as Lashkari at 53-1 in 1984, Spain at 55-1 in 2000, One Dreamer at 47-1 in 1994, and Volponi at 43-1 in 2002. But the upset of them all - the triumph of France's Arcangues at 133-1 in the Breeders' Cup Classic of 1993 - was a distinct surprise . . . or was it?
ARCADIA, Calif. - Murray Johnson says that Perfect Drift is ready for the Breeders' Cup Classic. Now let's see if the Breeders' Cup is ready for Murray Johnson.
In a year full of pragmatic iconoclasts like Bobby Frankel and Barclay Tagg, Johnson has emerged as the refreshing guy who just doesn't give a hoot what other people think of his horse, his training, or where he'll be running next.
ARCADIA, Calif. - Injuries, retirements, and defections have kept many of this season's star horses out of the Breeders' Cup, but Saturday's eight races are as close and competitive as any reasonable horseplayer could want. While traditional glamour divisions such as the Classic and Juvenile may have come up a bit light, other races, including the Juvenile Fillies and the Turf, are unusually compelling this year.
ARCADIA, Calif. - When Julie Krone made the decision to retire from riding, her reasons were compelling. In the aftermath of a horrific, bone-shattering spill, she lost her nerve in the saddle. She became cautious and tentative. Horses felt her tension, she believed, and didn't respond to her touch as they once had. Her body was also no longer able to withstand the stress of day-to-day competition.
ARCADIA, Calif. - Southern California is on fire again, so it must be time for a Breeders' Cup at Santa Anita Park.
When the international racing carnival last hit the Santa Anita side of town 10 years ago, the mountains rimming the L.A. basin were alive with the flames of a dozen distinct conflagrations. More fires burned to the south in Orange County, but the most dramatic - at least from the vantage point of Breeders' Cup participants - was the Sierra Madre fire that destroyed 151 homes in the foothills above the racetrack.