For the dedicated fan, Santa Anita Handicap Day always would begin early. Excitement gets you out of bed because there was nothing like it on the California calendar. Everything that happened before and after was just waiting. That’s the kind of race it used to be – nothing less than the most exciting two minutes in the West.

It is useless to rail against the dwindling of the Santa Anita Handicap in stature. I’ve tried, and nothing’s changed. Not only has its importance been overshadowed by the $10 million Dubai World Cup on one side of the calendar, it now has been betrayed on the other by its own parent – The Stronach Group – which saw fit to upstage its West Coast treasure with that behemoth of a Pegasus World Cup.

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fl. - It would be very easy to get carried away with Gunnevera’s dominating, off-the-pace victory in Saturday’s Fountain of Youth Stakes here at Gulfstream. I mean, he wasn’t even in the picture early, yet he was the only horse in the picture late in the run to the wire. His effort was indeed a fine one. But Gunnevera’s score didn’t happen in a vacuum, and it demands a degree of perspective.

There probably were alarm bells going off all around the horse-rescue universe last Oct. 6, when Royal F J was entered for an $8,000 claiming tag at Santa Anita after nine straight starts in which he was either overmatched or noncompetitive at a variety of levels.

After all, he was 9, he was making his 89th start in a career dating to August 2009, and he had never shown up for a price of less than $20,000 in his life. Red flags don’t come brighter.

It’s a good thing Mike Smith does not look at the world in terms of black and white. Look at what he would have missed.

A Breeders’ Cup Classic with Skip Away. A Breeders’ Cup Turf with Tikkanen. A Kentucky Derby with Giacomo. A Pegasus World Cup with Arrogate. A championship campaign with Stardom Bound. A Horse of the Year season with Holy Bull.

And whatever comes next with Unique Bella.

For those not familiar with the name Fernando Diaz-Valdes, get used to it. As adviser to the vast holdings of the Chilean-based Don Alberto Stable, Diaz-Valdes will be representing his patrons once again on Saturday at Santa Anita when their 3-year-old filly sensation Unique Bella struts her considerable stuff in the $100,000 Santa Ysabel Stakes at 1 1/16 miles on the main track.

If your inclination is to take Girvin’s upset of Saturday’s Risen Star Stakes at Fair Grounds lightly because it’s still early on the road to the Kentucky Derby, you might want to reassess.

Yes, it may still feel like we’re early on the Derby trail, but it’s actually later than you think. We are now in penultimate Derby prep territory. The Risen Star is the local springboard to the Louisiana Derby on April 1, which comes five weeks before the Kentucky Derby. And, notably, the Risen Star was the first U.S. race this year to offer 50 Derby points to the winner.

It figures that Charismatic would not go quietly into that good night. From his noble birth in Kentucky to his roller coaster of a career to his shocking death last week at Old Friends Equine because of a pelvic fracture, the shimmering chestnut spent most of his 21 years as a poster boy for the triumph and tragedy of the racing game.

Leave it to Neil Howard to do something wacky to mark his 68th birthday on Thursday.

“I’ll be laying low,” Howard said, “doing the usual stuff – pulling manes, cleaning sheets. Anyway, it’s always good to wait until Monday morning to celebrate or not.”

And what a celebration it could be if Howard’s pair of Guest Suite and Eagle come through on Saturday in New Orleans, where the Risen Star for ambitious 3-year-olds tops a stakes-laden program at Fair Grounds.

The idea of sprinters running for millions of dollars is not exactly new, and opportunities abound. The Breeders’ Cup Sprint has been around since 1984, while the Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint was added in 2008. The Golden Shaheen has been a mainstay of the Dubai World Cup card from the beginning. The Hong Kong Sprint became a million-dollar affair in 2001, and now Australia has upped the ante with its $10 million Pegasus-like sprint coming in October, modestly christened “The Everest.”