Keith Desormeaux was doing the work. The 2-year-olds Texas Red and Danette were cooled out in their stalls while Marchman, the barn’s older pro, was getting his bath after a work on the grass. Wearing a morning growth of whiskers and a gray T-shirt flecked with sweat and straw, Desormeaux, 47, moved among them, letting himself feel a little bit of the excitement of the approaching Breeders’ Cup.

With the elimination of the Juvenile Sprint last year and the Marathon this year, Breeders’ Cup Friday is down to four races, and they are largely devoid of championship implications. They do, however, comprise a very playable pick four that concludes with a showdown between two fillies who probably have already clinched Eclipse Awards.

Four winners of the first 15 races in the Penn Gaming Racing Challenge are among the horses entered for the Breeders’ Cup races Friday and Saturday at Santa Anita.

Trying to win the Breeders’ Cup Turf with a horse based in North America is one of those “why bother?” endeavors. American runners usually end up high-class cannon fodder, reduced to chanting the mantra, “It’s an honor simply to be nominated.”

Because they refuse to talk, and usually just stand there and eat, horses need the people around them to speak up every once in a while to keep the troops entertained.

This reporter always has had a weakness for their exercise riders. Don’t know why. Maybe it’s because they’ve got more time on their hands than the labor-intense grooms. Maybe it’s because most of them have the discipline to stay as fit as jockeys, which some of them have been. Maybe it’s because they are putting their lives and limbs on the line just like jockeys but at a considerably lower rate of pay.

It’s time to meet the 201 pre-entrants for the 13 Breeders’ Cup races next Friday and Saturday at Santa Anita. It is, as always, a dazzling group in the aggregate, though skewing a little poorer at the top end than in most years.

They weren’t bluffing, those Euros. When they threatened several years ago that Santa Anita’s switch back to a dirt main track would stick a fork in half of the Breeders’ Cup program, at least in terms of European participation, they definitely meant what they said.

As I get ready to disappear into the Breeders’ Cup video bunker for a few days, I am reluctant to read any of the dispatches from the DRF field. Each time I read, another of my singles disappears – first Wise Dan, then Beholder. Actually, they were my only two singles, so I am definitely playing catch-up.

Without a horse or horses to frame multirace wagers around or use as a free space on top of a vertical bet, the very difficult task of converting Breeders’ Cup opinions into cash becomes monumentally difficult.

I am absolutely a sucker for old horses that win no matter the obstacles. I got my start at the Maryland tracks in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Anybody with a long memory will remember a horse named Jet Again who ran in low-level claiming races. He saved me from myself at Bowie on more days than I can remember. Every Saturday one year at Laurel, Elevate would appear in the last race, a starter handicap. They kept giving him more weight. I kept betting more money. And we both kept winning.

Back in the days before the Breeders’ Cup was a smoothly running, well-oiled machine, there was no way to get the most famous horse in America into the inaugural event without his owner forking over a $400,000 supplementary fee to run in the $2 million Breeders’ Cup Turf and then kissing that fee goodbye. At that point, such fees were not added to the purse.