Churchill Downs

Kentucky Derby trainer Bob Baffert urged him to spin a doughnut after touring Churchill Downs in a NASCAR Winston Cup car Thursday, but being a Kentucky native, Jeremy Mayfield couldn't bring himself to desecrate the hallowed course where they'll have "the Run for the Roses" today. "Bob wanted me to spin in the mud, but I told him if he wanted to see any doughnuts, he could drive it," said Mayfield after arriving here Friday amid raindrops.

Results from the Breeders' Cup on Saturday at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Ky. $500,000 Marathon Afleet Again, at odds of 41-1, rallied in the stretch to win the 1 3/4-mile race and return $85.20. Afleet Again had lost 13 consecutive races. Favorite A.U. Miner was pulled up after suffering a broken leg bone. $1-million Juvenile Turf Wrote, a 2-year-old son of two-time Breeders' Cup Turf winner High Chaparral, gave European-based horses their first victory of the weekend, winning the mile race at odds of 11-1 for trainer Aidan O'Brien.

On Thursday night, trainer Nick Zito got a phone call from his mother in New York. "Will you shut up and just win the race," was her advice. Zito, one of eight trainers running horses in the Kentucky Derby for the first time, has a lot to say and he has gone right on saying it this week at Churchill Downs. Every day his mother picks up a New York newspaper, Zito's opinions about his horse, Thirty Six Red, and the rest of the Derby field are plastered all over it.

At Wagner's Pharmacy, a storied institution across the street from Churchill Downs, Paul Hornung sat at the lunch counter and said, "I'm ready to ride the sixth race today." The man on the stool next to Hornung, renowned veterinarian Alex Harthill, laughed loudly. Hornung, the former Notre Dame and Green Bay Packer star, is well north of 200 pounds and in no position to ride horses at Churchill. But his joke was well timed.

Reporting from Louisville, Ky. -- Todd Pletcher didn't want to watch the Kentucky Derby with friends. He didn't want to watch it with family. He didn't want to pick one of the four owners he was representing and sit with them. In fact, he didn't even want to watch it live from the stands. He wanted to watch it alone, on television, inside the Horseman's Lounge, halfway down the tunnel beneath the Churchill Downs grandstands. "Obviously, I needed to change something," said Pletcher, who entered Saturday's 136th Run for the Roses 0 for 24, the most attempts without a victory in the history of the race.

Friday at Churchill Downs was like every day at Wimbledon. The big deal was the weather report. Boiled down to the basics, forecasters said that Saturday's 136th Kentucky Derby might be run in a swamp. The undercard may now include the Slops Stakes, the Rain Romp and the Muckrackers' Mile. They will sing the national anthem and then bring on Paul Simon for "Slip Slidin' Away." They held a news conference at which they predicted thundershowers and 1½ inches of rain overnight and then some scattered showers "between 10 a.m. and the Derby race time of 6:28 p.m. [EDT]

Reporting from Louisville, Ky. — A mare is seeking a horse racing accomplishment for the record books. So is a woman. And a group of men have put their faith in a young female horse that has performed as if their late Southern California friend is orchestrating the outcome. These are some of the stories leading into the Breeders' Cup as the sport's largest collection of international thoroughbreds compete in 15 races Friday and Saturday worth a combined $25.5 million at Churchill Downs.

Mack Miller figures his run of good luck started about 50 years ago on a gangplank in a Seattle harbor. "I had one foot on a ship heading for Japan," Miller recalled the morning before Sea Hero gave him his first Kentucky Derby victory, "and the CO says, 'Wait a minute. We don't need two staff sergeants. We'll toss a coin.' " Guess who won? Miller can't recall if it was heads or tails. But, like so many of the moves he has made in an almost seamless 44-year career, it was right on the money.