Curlin is in town, and a Hollywood deal is brewing

We have another rock star in the city of bright lights. Welcome to Hollywood, Curlin.

Given a little more time here, and maybe a sentence or two, this magnificent racehorse might become as big as Mr. Ed.

Right now, Barn 27 at Santa Anita is the hot spot of the racing world. There's even extra security.

"They have theirs," says Ron Charles, Santa Anita president and chief executive. "And we added some of ours."

These are interesting days at the Arcadia race track.

The annual Oak Tree meeting, usually taking place in relative serenity, has become the flash point for the sport on several levels. This year's meeting will lead to a grand finale called the Breeders' Cup, where almost every race for two days is worth at least $1 million and the big one is worth $5 million. And that Big One is becoming bigger every day, even while it is still not certain it will happen.

That ideal matchup would put Big Brown and Curlin on the same track in the same race for the $5-million purse, and the likely honor of Horse of the Year. On Saturday at Belmont Park in New York, Curlin won the Jockey Club Gold Cup.

That was expected. What wasn't expected was that this 4-year-old treasure would be put in a van at 5 a.m. the next day and flown immediately to California.

Roughly 24 hours after Curlin had passed the $10-million mark in earnings, best ever in North America, he was unloaded from a van and walked into Barn 27, surrounded by open notebooks and clicking cameras.

Now, Curlin is being walked for a few days, then galloped, maybe by the end of the week. And soon, his connections will make the decision. Is Santa Anita's new version of a synthetic track safe enough for this multimillion dollars worth of horse to run on? Is it to his liking? Is the risk worth the potential reward, especially for a horse that has already won the Breeders' Cup Classic last year and already won the Horse of the Year honors last year.

Interwoven in this drama is a cast of characters that would make a boxing promoter drool.

"We'll be putting a tale of the tape out there before this one," Charles says.

In one corner, quick with lip, is Big Brown's trainer, Rick Dutrow Jr. His horse won the first two legs of the Triple Crown and several impressive starts this fall. Dutrow's usual reaction to other horses about to race his is a sniff or a dismissive phrase. His ownership goes right with him, and the entire camp has pushed for the matchup with Curlin like a guy on a bar stool.