American Pharoah already has swept the Triple Crown, Beholder already has won a pair of Eclipse Awards, and Honor Code likely has sewn up his first divisional title. One thing they’ve not already done, though, is race against one another, and that’s the most tantalizing aspect of this year’s Breeders’ Cup Classic specifically and this year’s Breeders’ Cup in general.

No Breeders’ Cup race has produced repeat winners like the Mile, and 2014 hero Karakontie remains on track to make it six times that a winner has returned to score again the following season.

Karakontie has more Mile history behind him. A France-based horse like Karakontie has won the Mile 10 times in 31 runnings, while Karakontie’s owner, the Niarchos family, has landed six Mile trophies with five different horses. Trainer Jonathan Pease, retiring at season’s end, trains Karakontie and trained the Niarchos-owned Spinning World to win in 1997.

ARCADIA, Calif. – Songbird, the impressive winner of the Grade 1 Del Mar Debutante on Sept. 5, has scared away a few rivals for Saturday’s $300,000 Chandelier Stakes for 2-year-old fillies at Santa Anita.

On Wednesday, trainers Richard Mandella and John Sadler indicated that fillies from their barns would skip the Chandelier in favor of the $70,000 Anoakia Stakes at six furlongs Oct. 11.

Mandella said Lucky Folie, the winner of a maiden race at 5 1/2 furlongs in her debut at Del Mar on Sept. 6, is not ready for the Grade 1 Chandelier Stakes, which is run at 1 1/16 miles.

ARCADIA, Calif. – The purse of the $192,000 Fleet Treat Stakes at Del Mar on July 25 has been ordered redistributed after race winner Big Book tested in excess of the permitted level of the tranquilizer acepromazine, according to a statement released by the California Horse Racing Board.

ARCADIA, Calif. – Obviously, who finished third in the Woodbine Mile in Canada on Sept. 13, will not start in the $200,000 City of Hope Mile at Santa Anita and will be trained toward the Breeders’ Cup Mile at Keeneland on Oct. 31.

Trainer Phil D’Amato said he prefers a lengthier gap between starts for Obviously, a 7-year-old gelding who has won seven stakes.

“The spacing is good, it’s whether I can get in” to the BC Mile, D’Amato said. “I hope to run in the Breeders’ Cup. The six weeks is perfect. I don’t want to run him in three weeks and then again in three weeks.”

Some background on the $1 million Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile, which will be run for the ninth time on Friday, Oct. 30:

◗ The maximum number of starters is 12, plus two also-eligible horses.

◗ Because Keeneland’s main track is 1 1/16 miles around, the two-turn race will start in front of the stands, and the first finish line will be utilized, meaning not all of the 1,236-foot stretch run will come into play. This should work in favor of forwardly placed runners.

Sheer Drama’s final road trip of the year will be a 15-hour van ride from Gulfstream Park to Keeneland, where on Oct. 30 she will be favored to win a third straight Grade 1 race.

Not just any Grade 1. It is the $2 million Breeders’ Cup Distaff, and with Beholder likely headed to the BC Classic, Sheer Drama currently is the horse to beat in the Distaff.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Two of the more popular horses on this circuit, Untapable and Runhappy, had serious workouts early this week toward their respective races on the huge FallStars Weekend that opens the Keeneland fall meet.

Untapable, pointing toward the Oct. 4 Spinster for Steve Asmussen, breezed six furlongs Monday in 1:12.20 at Churchill. On Tuesday, Runhappy, a principal for the Phoenix on the Oct. 2 opening-day card, was sent from his Thoroughbred Center training facility base to get five furlongs in 59.20 seconds at Keeneland for Maria Borell.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Major League Baseball legend Yogi Berra famously said, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it,” so that’s what Al Stall Jr. will do this weekend with Departing.

Stall, as savvy about the sports world as he is about training racehorses – which is considerably – is aware that the schedule he has mapped for Departing this year looks something like what Berra would have laid out. Stall has mixed the distances and surfaces for Departing the way Berra did his metaphors.

The Monmouth Park season concludes Sunday, and New Jersey racing will shift to the Meadowlands on Thursday, Oct. 1, for a 13-day all-turf meet.

Jorge Navarro has locked up his third consecutive Monmouth training title. Navarro, 40, has won 40 races at the meet from 152 starters, a 26 percent win average.

Jamie Ness is second coming into closing weekend with 27 wins, three more than Marcus Vitali, who is third.