Breeders Cup Horse Race

About 100 yards from the finish line at Belmont Park, roughly halfway between the horseshoe-shaped hedges that mark the grave sites of Ruffian and Timely Writer, racing lost another of its best Saturday. Go For Wand, said by many to be the next Ruffian, followed that great filly to a death in the call of duty. Timely Writer was destroyed after breaking down at the top of the stretch in the 1982 Jockey Club Gold Cup.

As strong and sure as the trainers of the horses in the Breeders' Cup Classic are about their entries for Saturday's $5-million race, the truth will rise not from the Southern comfort of biased analysis but from the demands of the 1 1/4-mile-long dirt track at Churchill Downs. "You need a seasoned, battle-hardened horse to win this -- tactically quick, but able to grind it out at the end," said trainer Aidan O'Brien, whose New Zealand-bred entry, So You Think, is making his U.S. debut on dirt.

On Sunday morning at Gulfstream Park, trainer Ron McAnally was not a man without a horse. He was a man without a horseshoer. Bayakoa, McAnally's 5-year-old mare, was about to work seven furlongs in preparation for her appearance Saturday in the $1-million Breeders' Cup Distaff but she had a loose shoe on her left hind foot. McAnally went over to the barn of another California trainer, Charlie Whittingham, to see if he knew anything about Gulfstream blacksmiths working on Sunday.

The horses will keep running, but for a while, the fans will stop caring as much. Horse racing is no different from other sports. Seasons build to highs and, that ended, return to plateaus of the routine. Zenyatta will race no more. Certainly, she will not be forgotten. Her dash down the homestretch at Churchill Downs on Saturday, ending three inches short of the wonderful colt Blame, was both a tonic and a catalyst for her sport. So many more watched with so much more interest than would ever be imagined for a niche-audience event such as the Breeders' Cup that the potential lasting residuals should not be underestimated.

The 1996 Breeders' Cup Championship will be moved from Toronto's Woodbine Racetrack because of concerns about a labor dispute, officials announced Thursday. A new site has not been set but Breeders' Cup Limited said it would announce the venue by mid-June. "We deeply regret this decision to move the Breeders' Cup Championship from Toronto, but without the necessary assurances that the event can be run free of labor disruption, we have no other alternative," said James E.

The detente between Frank Stronach and the National Thoroughbred Racing Assn. means that the Breeders' Cup is heading back to Santa Anita. Sherwood Chillingworth, executive vice president of the Oak Tree Racing Assn., which as a Santa Anita tenant hosted Breeders' Cups in 1986 and 1993, said that no contract has been signed for racing's big year-end day in 2002, but other sources indicated that the Breeders' Cup and Oak Tree are close to a deal.

Owners complain that the 6-figure supplementary fees--ranging from $120,000 to $600,000--charged to make non-nominated horses eligible for the Breeders' Cup are prohibitive and a bad gamble. But yet, some have risked such outlays every time the races have been held, and this year will be no exception. When Churchill Downs runs the 7 Breeders' Cup races next Saturday for purses worth $10 million, the owners of 2 of the 87 horses will have more to lose than others.

Flanders, who has finished first in all five of her races, won a stretch-long duel with stablemate Serena's Song in the Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies on Saturday, but suffered a cannon-bone injury to her right foreleg and will undergo surgery Monday. Trainer Wayne Lukas said a pin will be inserted into the filly's leg and she is expected to race again.

Horsemen don't have to peruse the record book to know that it's nearly impossible for a horse to win a Breeders' Cup race twice. This year, however, there's a reasonable chance that more than one horse might do exactly that. Of the four who will try when the event is held for the 22nd time Saturday at Belmont Park, two are likely to be favored and the others are given good chances of pulling off upsets, as they did a year ago in Texas.

The first racetrack job Laura de Seroux had was at a track in East St. Louis, Ill., that's not there anymore. Cahokia Downs, about 300 miles south of here, might not have been the ideal career launch for a college English major who was driving cross-country from California in her Volkswagen. For at Cahokia, you could leave after the night's last race and find your whole car, not just the hubcaps, missing. That's what's known as a bad night at the races.

Irish-bred Goldikova defended her title in the Breeders' Cup Mile with an impressive late charge Saturday, providing French trainer Freddy Head with an accomplishment not likely to be matched any time soon. Head, a former jockey who rode Miesque to consecutive victories in the Mile in 1987-88, became the only person to win the same race twice as a jockey and trainer. "It's something I don't have the words to try to say what I feel," he said afterward. "Because having ridden a horse like her . . . and now to train a horse like her, it's something you can't dream of."

These kinds of stories happen only in the movies. Hollywood can create the drama, the unbelievable ending, even the tears. Zenyatta doesn't need Hollywood. She produces her own show. She is, as her jockey Mike Smith, says, "a race horse sent from heaven." On a day that racing will cherish for a long time, a historic moment that may sustain, even boost, a struggling industry for years to come, Zenyatta beat the boys. Oh my, did she. She won the $5-million Breeders' Cup Classic, a male domain for all of its previous 25 years.

Lots of heartfelt wishes were pulling Ventura toward the finish line Friday at Santa Anita, as the 5-year-old, Bobby Frankel -trained mare tried to chase down Informed Decision in the home stretch of the $1-million Breeders' Cup Filly & Mare Sprint. Ventura was the defending champion, but was 1 1/4 lengths shy and in second place this time. Frankel, a Hall of Fame trainer and recipient of five Eclipse Awards as the sport's trainer of the year, has been quietly battling cancer for about six months.

It's a week before the Breeders' Cup World Championships and Mike Smith sits in a quiet corner of the Santa Anita jockeys' room, searching for words to describe Zenyatta's special qualities. The 5-year-old mare will try to extend her undefeated streak to a record 14 major races today when she competes for the first time against males in the marquee Breeders' Cup Classic. Smith, 44, a Hall of Fame jockey whose remarkable career spans nearly 30 years, says that Zenyatta is probably the best horse he has ridden and that if she prevails "she'll have to go down as one of the all-time greats."

With the stars of the show back in their barns, it was left to their trainers to provide the color at Tuesday afternoon's Breeders' Cup post-position draw at Santa Anita. The talk, naturally, was mostly about Saturday's $5-million Classic, especially after the connections of unbeaten mare Zenyatta decided to try their luck against the males. The winner of 13 in a row, Zenyatta was drawn in post position No. 4 and installed as the 5-2 favorite. On her inside will be Kentucky Derby winner and Preakness runner-up Mine That Bird, in the No. 1 hole.

A casual horse player's guide to parimutuel wagering, especially as it pertains to the Breeders' Cup World Championships on Friday and Saturday at Santa Anita. . . . The money trail First-time track-goers may wonder where their money goes. Parimutuel wagering is different from regular sports betting, in which the house (a bookie or legal sports book) generally takes a 10% cut referred to as juice. At the track your wager is like a stock transaction: A $2 bet ticket buys a share in the horse's performance.

After winning the Kentucky Derby twice in the 1990s, running 11 horses in the pinnacle race and not missing a Derby from 1994 through 1999, trainer Nick Zito was marooned in New York, watching this year's running on television. Zito made an appearance at Churchill Downs the week before the Derby, running Valiant Halory, a third-place finisher in the Derby Trial. "That was torture, to the first degree," Zito said.

The last time there was a shock this big in the Breeders' Cup Classic was when Arcangues, a sore-backed interloper from France, won at 133-1 in 1993. Volponi is as American as they come, despite the name that ends with a vowel, and he's sound from top to bottom besides, but that price next to his number on Arlington Park's tote board Saturday was an Arcangues-like payoff.

The price tag on racehorses -- starting at a few thousand and rising steeply from there -- is only a beginning. These finely tuned animals need to be housed, fed, trained and, much like children, kept in new shoes. It is a perfectly sunny afternoon at Santa Anita Park, and Peter Lurie is watching the races, scribbling notes between quick bites of lunch, telling the story of how he came to own his first thoroughbred. After a lucrative year as a voice-over actor, Lurie needed a tax write-off.

During Breeders' Cup week, The Times takes a look at the many betting systems used in horse racing: Who: Bob Ike, handicapper for Los Angeles Newspaper Group. System: Using video and past performance. The scoop: It's easy to identify Ike in the press box at Santa Anita. He's the one holding a remote control while staring at the television set and watching video of past races. He tries to pick up hints how a horse might perform in his next race through video. As for seeing European horses set to run in this weekend's Breeders' Cup, he'll be going to Breederscup360.