January may be barely a week old, but for many the real road to the May 6 Kentucky Derby began Saturday at Santa Anita in a sloppy-track Sham Stakes. Gormley and American Anthem put on quite a show in the Sham, slugging it out from beginning to end, and virtually distancing the five others who shared the starting gate with them

A dozen or so of California Chrome’s loyal fans were gathered at Art Sherman’s Los Alamitos barn in the wee hours of a chilly Friday morning to pay homage to their chestnut hero as he prepared to leave for Florida and his final start in the Pegasus World Cup on Jan. 28.

It was a little before 2 a.m. The mood was reverent. Then Sherman pulled up in his Mercedes GLC 300, and the party started.

“Are we ready?” Sherman announced, playing to the small crowd.

It was supposed to rain in Arcadia, Calif., all day Thursday and possibly into Friday, and since weather predictions never lie, there was at least a chance that Saturday’s $200,000 San Gabriel Stakes on the Santa Anita turf could turn into a main-track mudfest.

Elizabeth Arden Graham, cosmetics entrepreneur and racehorse owner, drove her trainers to distraction with her frilly pink stable trappings, her bizarre interpretations of horsey dreams, and her demands to use products designed for the faces of women on the hooves of her Thoroughbreds.

Not surprisingly, Graham went through scores of trainers during the heyday of her Maine Chance Farm. She also won the Kentucky Derby with Jet Pilot, raced the champions Star Pilot and Beaugay, and in 1945 led the nation’s owners in earnings.

Hand it to Santa Anita racing chief Rick Hammerle. He threaded the needle with perfection. His track needed to offer a prep race for the Pegasus World Cup on Jan. 28. The San Pasqual Stakes, at a mile and one-sixteenth, was the most likely candidate. And yet, he did not want to waste a traditional race for good older horses at the tail of the previous year. It needed to count for something in 2017.

The result? Happy New Year. Arrogate runs on Sunday.

The oak tree in winter is not a pretty sight. Barren of its multilobed leaves, months from the flowering that brings forth acorns, it stands in scratchy silhouette against the gray winter sky, waiting to be reborn in the spring.

Which brings us to the American Oaks, to be run on Saturday, Dec. 31, at Santa Anita Park.

When it came to the annual Eclipse Award for outstanding owner, there once were some creative choices. Juddmonte Farms won in 1992 with a small, select group of North American stakes runners before anyone over here could put Prince Khalid’s face to his stable’s name. Bert and Diana Firestone were honored in 1980 when their Genuine Risk became the first filly to win the Kentucky Derby in 65 years. And in 1990, Frances Genter won because her colt Unbridled won the Kentucky Derby and the Breeders’ Cup Classic, and because she was Frances Genter.

Never mind what the dateline says. The opening of Santa Anita Park each Dec. 26 marks a new beginning. Tough losses retreat into the mists of last summer. Disappointments give way to hopes for what comes next. All that, and they give you a free calendar, just in case the message isn’t clear.

Brian Lynch can be forgiven if he would like the magic of 2016 to last a little longer, or at least until the seventh race is in the books Monday afternoon. That is when Lightstream, the queen of his public stable, will go postward in the $300,000 La Brea Stakes at seven furlongs.

Sometimes it’s okay to just watch them run, to strip away all the folderol that has nothing to do with the heart of the matter and simply enjoy the sight of a remarkable Thoroughbred in action.

If tragedies are meant to be clustered in threes, then Thoroughbred racing has paid its dues in full for the rest of 2016.

In another life, Steve Sexton was a colleague at Daily Racing Form. His name on a teletyped message or an inter-office bundle meant you were getting the straight scoop, and that the job – any job – was getting done with a discipline of purpose and respect for the work that co-workers crave in a boss on the rise.

Sexton was 57 when a virulent form of brain cancer took him from his friends and loving family at home in Texas last week.