LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Baseball has the setup man, the closer, and the designated hitter, football has defensive backs inserted on passing situations and pass-rushers who play just on third down. The age of specialization has accelerated in all sports, including racing, where rarely are top-class horses as good on turf as they are on dirt.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – The first local appearance of nearly two dozen European contenders for this year’s Breeders’ Cup, a group that included Arc winner Enable and defending BC Turf winner Talismanic, highlighted Monday’s five-hour training session at Churchill Downs. Also featured were impressive-looking breezes by top contenders Midnight Bisou (Distaff) and Yoshida (Classic).

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – At 34, Chad Summers is old enough to know that respect is earned only through the passing of time, but sometimes he gets impatient anyway. Summers has been a licensed trainer for less than two years, and that’s one reason he believes his stable star Mind Your Biscuits is often slighted.

“We call Biscuits the ‘but’ horse,” Summers said. “People say, yeah, he’s a good horse – but he’s a New York-bred. But he’s never gone a mile and a quarter. But he’s not in the barn of a super-trainer. It does get a little old.”

After four dark days, racing on this circuit moves to Aqueduct for the next six months beginning with a nine-race card on Friday that begins at 12:15 p.m. Eastern.

Friday’s card will include the Grade 3, $150,000 Tempted Stakes for 2-year-old fillies. Originally a field of 10 was entered, but Seek and Destroy and Hollywood Glory ran 1-2 in Sunday’s off-the-turf Chelsey Flower Stakes and are not expected to run back.

Bad weather meant bad business for the New York Racing Association during the Belmont Park fall meet.

Plagued by rain that forced 64 scheduled turf races to be moved to the main track, all-sources handle at Belmont was $269,002,237, down 11 percent from last fall’s figure of $303,405,927. Last fall, only five races were moved off the turf. There were only 117 turf races run this year compared with 181 last year.

When the Breeders’ Cup landed at Churchill Downs in 1988, the event was a mere stripling of 4. But even at that stage, the championship series had delivered on its promise of crowning champions and showcasing the elite of the breed by age, surface, and distance.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Abel Tasman and Monomoy Girl have already provided their connections with one-in-a-lifetime moments at Churchill Downs by winning the Kentucky Oaks. On Saturday, they’ll try to make those memories twice in a lifetime.

The fillies, who have shared the same race program twice this year, will share the same starting gate in the $2 million Breeders’ Cup Distaff in a rare meeting of Kentucky Oaks winners.

“I am so proud of her,” trainer Bob Baffert has said of Abel Tasman. “She’s one of my favorite all-time horses.”

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – It began when two-time Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe winner Enable stepped onto the Churchill Downs racing surface alongside her stablemate Roaring Lion, winner of four straight Group 1 races, at about 7:40 Monday morning and ended about two hours later when 2017 Breeders’ Cup Turf-winner Talismanic, walking with fellow Breeders’ Cup Turf entrant Waldgeist, left the track through the same gap.

Sol Kumin was part-owner of a Breeders’ Cup winner in 2014 and 2015 and thought owning Thoroughbreds was an easy game.

“I thought, ‘We can do this every year,’ he said.

Not quite.

Kumin did not win a Breeders’ Cup race in 2016 or 2017. In 2016, Kumin’s two previous Breeders’ Cup winners, Lady Eli and Wavell Avenue, finished second in the Filly and Mare Turf and Filly and Mare Sprint, respectively. Last year, Kumin finished second in the Turf with Beach Patrol, while Lady Eli got stepped on during the running of the Filly and Mare Turf and finished eighth.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – This is the place Bob Baffert wants to be on the first Saturday in May – at Churchill Downs, in the winner’s circle. He’s gotten pretty good at it, having won the Kentucky Derby five times, twice with horses who went on to win the Triple Crown. The bloom is not off his roses.