HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Javier Castellano has ridden more than 4,000 winners in his career, and he might reasonably have been blasé when he captured a minor race by a dozen lengths at Gulfstream Park on Sunday. But after the jockey dismounted from the 3-year-old colt Khozan, he declared: “That’s what we live for with the horses!”

It now appears that my plan to eliminate stewards is not going to be adopted. It could all be so much simpler. First horse to the wire wins. No controversy.

One of the first stories I ever wrote was a freelance piece for the now-defunct Baltimore News-American about the Maryland stewards not long after the 1980 Codex-Genuine Risk Preakness controversy. It was an examination of their duties and how they arrived at decisions. I observed a lot, conducted a few interviews, and read the rules of racing. My memory is that I typed a lot of words and ended up with few answers.

At the rate it’s going, the 2014 Breeders’ Cup Classic could have a longer run than “The Simpsons,” at least in the tightly knit (and tightly wound) Thoroughbred racing community. It has yet to be dubbed with a media-friendly hook – Starting gate-gate? Bayernapalooza? – but give it time. I can guarantee that when the Breeders’ Cup returns to Santa Anita Park in 2016, the 2014 running of the Classic will be revisited with all the prurient enthusiasm of an unsolved celebrity murder case.

Even before the 2014 Breeders’ Cup, racing fans recognized that Chad Brown is a fast-rising star in the Thoroughbred business, one with a magic touch handling grass runners. But it was at Santa Anita last fall that Brown certified that he is in the top echelon of his profession. He did something that only three other trainers have ever accomplished, winning three races in a single Breeders’ Cup. Those victories – all on grass – helped boost his horses’ year-end purse winnings to $15.3 million, second-best in the nation behind Todd Pletcher’s all-powerful stable.

Those 53 noble souls – the few, the proud – who voted for Main Sequence for 2014 Horse of the Year will be able to climb back onto their high horse Saturday when their chestnut hero returns to action in the $200,000 Mac Diarmida Stakes at Gulfstream Park.

California Chrome outpolled Main Sequence by 90 votes in the 2014 paper chase, but those 53 holdouts are anxious to join the “I told you so” bandwagon already fueled by Shared Belief in the debate over the best American horse in training. Chromies, Beliefers, Mainliners ... good grief. Sounds like a Roller Derby league.

If you’re looking for future classic winners, a good place to start is the Fountain of Youth Stakes, which was first run in 1945 and will be renewed Saturday at Gulfstream Park. The 1945 and 1947 editions of the race were for 2-year-olds in December, but all the other runnings – 61 of them, including three years when the race split – have been for 3-year-olds in February or March, and the roll of winners is a strong one.

On the face of it, Pain and Misery is just about the worst name you could give a racehorse. This is not to trample on an owner’s first amendment rights to freedom of speech and its more creative expressions (as upheld in The Jockey Club vs. Mike Pegram in the naming of Isitingood). But this is 2015, for Pete’s sake, and the tolerance for any whiff of a cold-hearted attitude toward the welfare of the animal has pretty much evaporated.

The emotional response to the decision by the California Chrome camp to head for the $10 million Dubai World Cup instead of staying home to run in the $1 million Santa Anita Handicap is perfectly understandable. I forgive myself.

You never know where you’ll reach a trainer on a dark-day afternoon. The golf course can be a good bet, sometimes a poker parlor, maybe a farm, or deep in a Barcalounger, dozing off to a grainy rerun of “Boots Malone.”

The best grass horse in California is a beefy bay son of Powerscourt with a small white tornado between his eyes and two hind stockings. He was named by his breeder and co-owner, Jerry Crawford, for an incomprehensible Irish novel that is widely praised but rarely read, and his success has been a head-shaking surprise to the folks back at the farm who first saw him stand and nurse on legs that were less than perfect.