The Grade 1, $1 million Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile picked up a major player this week when trainer Bob Baffert said Dortmund is being pointed to the Nov. 4 race at Santa Anita.

Dortmund has been chasing Breeders’ Cup Classic favorite California Chrome in his last three starts, finishing second to him in the San Diego at Del Mar, third to him in the Pacific Classic at Del Mar, and second to him in the Awesome Again in his most recent start Oct. 1 at Santa Anita.

“That Chrome, he’s tough to beat,” Baffert said. “We took him on – tried off the pace, going with him.”

Deshawn Parker let everyone at Mountaineer know he was back in the saddle Tuesday night, winning with five of his seven mounts. Parker was returning from a 2 1/2-week absence, and the timing couldn’t have been better for Parker’s longtime agent, Billy Johnson, who is hospitalized after being involved in an automobile accident.

Parker injured a foot in a gate mishap Sept. 25 at Mountaineer. He has won 196 races at the meet through Tuesday and leads the rider standings by 42. In May, Parker won the 5,000th race of his career.

Favorite Tale was scratched out of a $90,000, no-conditions allowance sprint at Parx Racing last Saturday due to a foot abscess, according to trainer Lupe Preciado. Favorite Tale was going to use the race as a prep for the Breeders’ Cup Sprint.

Preciado said Favorite Tale missed three or four days of training due to the abscess and returned to the track Monday.

“It’s going to take a while to get him right again,” Preciado said. “We missed his prep race last weekend and will not be able to make the Breeders’ Cup.”

Something’s got to give when a stellar field assembles at Santa Anita on Nov. 5 for what may be the most challenging and competitive Breeders’ Cup Sprint in recent memory.

Lord Nelson, A. P. Indian, Joking, and Delta Bluesman, the four Breeders’ Cup Challenge race winners in the division, will enter the Sprint having won 18 of their last 19 starts combined. They’ll be joined in the gate by Drefong and Masochistic, who are a perfect 5 for 5 between them and are both Grade 1 winners in 2016.

Mongolian Saturday, a smallish but scrappy gelding, is nippy in the shed row and has to hit the track first rather than deigning to walk in line in the post parade.

But when his feet touched the turf course last Saturday at Keeneland, he was all business.

“He was very calm,” trainer Enebish Ganbat said. “He was never calm like today. I was surprised – [I thought], ‘Maybe he’s wrong.’ ”

The last two prep races for the $1 million Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint were run last weekend, but perhaps the biggest piece of news regarding the Nov. 5 race at Santa Anita was the revelation from trainer Todd Pletcher that Curalina will be pre-entered in both the Filly and Mare Sprint and the $2 million BC Distaff.

The undefeated Sweet Loretta will head into the $2 million Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies at Santa Anita on Nov. 5 as the top 2-year-old filly on the East Coast. The 1 1/16-mile race will be her first start in nine weeks.

The extended time between races is not necessarily a bad thing. Last year, trainer Todd Pletcher ran 16 horses in stakes at Keeneland over Breeders’ Cup weekend. He experienced his greatest success with horses coming in off short layoffs.

Berned, a promising 2-year-old daughter of Bernardini trained by Tom Albertrani, is being pointed to the Grade 3, $200,000 Tempted on Nov. 5 at Aqueduct.

Berned has raced twice, including a win in a maiden race at Belmont Park on Sept. 10. Albertrani said Berned was not quite ready to return in last weekend's Grade 1 Frizette.

"She's been training okay, but I think she'll benefit from having a little more time before her next start," Albertrani said of Berned, a $550,000 Keeneland yearling purchase owned by Three C Stables, West Point Thoroughbreds and Robert Masiello.

ARCADIA, Calif. – Santa Anita is planning to conduct racing on a three-day schedule for two consecutive weeks in April to rest the turf course, senior vice-president Joe Morris said last weekend.

Speaking at a forum conducted by the Thoroughbred Owners of California, Morris said the three-day racing weeks will be held on April 14-16 and 21-23, the first two weeks of the track’s spring-summer meeting. During that time, there will be no turf racing.

ARCADIA, Calif. – Gloryzapper won Sunday’s Grade 3 L.A. Woman Stakes for sprinters at Santa Anita, but trainer Phil D’Amato said he hasn’t decided whether to run her in the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint here on Nov. 5.

“We’ll take a look at it and decide what we want to do,” D’Amato said.