LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Mendelssohn’s last-place finish in the Kentucky Derby spurred trainer Aidan O’Brien to “change the system” when it came to preparing the 3-year-old for Saturday’s $6 million Breeders’ Cup Classic at Churchill Downs.

So far, O’Brien believes the plan has worked. Saturday could provide the proof.

“We would feel he’s probably in a better place now than he was going to Kentucky,” O’Brien, referring to the Derby, said Thursday at Churchill Downs. “He’s had more experience, and he knows what’s expected. We’re looking forward to it, really.”

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Under normal circumstances, the weather would have been the main story Thursday at Churchill Downs, where the rain, which began Wednesday afternoon, continued to fall throughout training hours, leaving the main track a sea of slop and the turf course soft and boggy one day before the two-day Breeders’ Cup begins.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – A couple of years ago, trainer John Sadler took a trip to Spain. When he got back he had a wall calendar affixed above the desk in his barn that had as its featured photo one month the Sagrada Familia, the famous church in Barcelona that was designed by the great architect Antoni Gaudi in the 1880s and which, to this day, though a major tourist attraction, remains unfinished.

That building is a metaphor for Sadler’s career.

It’s remarkable, really, how well the European shippers handle traveling to an American racetrack for the Breeders’ Cup. Things are just so much different for them here. At home they do not live at the track, only travelling there and back the day they race. Training takes place at a relaxed rhythm, often out in fields, through forest paths, over hill and dale – not out on a crowded dirt oval filled with strange horses.

Giving racehorses plenty of time between races leading into any major event has become a common practice among American trainers, and so it goes with the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint at Churchill Downs on Saturday.

CHURCHILL DOWNS, Oct. 31

Weather: Cloudy
Temp.: 62
Track: Fast
Turf: Good

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – With heavy rain forecast beginning early Wednesday afternoon and expected to continue through Thursday, there was action on the Churchill Downs main track and over the turf course with the start of Breeders’ Cup 2018 only 48 hours away.

ARCADIA, Calif. – Friday’s 10-race program at Santa Anita begins with a carryover of $992,979 in the 20-cent Rainbow 6, with interest expected to heighten dramatically for Sunday’s closing day of the meeting, which has a mandatory payout.

The carryover portion is paid only if there is one winning ticket, which has yet to occur through last Sunday, the 19th day of the 22-day meeting. Sunday’s Rainbow pick six paid $31,431. There were six winning tickets from a pool of $353,039.

ARCADIA, Calif. – Hunt, who was withdrawn from Saturday’s Breeders’ Cup Mile at Churchill Downs this week because of illness, will be pointed for the Grade 2 Seabiscuit Handicap at Del Mar on Nov. 24, a race he won last year.

“He was off his feed about a week before we were going to send him,” trainer Phil D’Amato said. “We treated him, and he was good.

“We took a final blood before he was going to go on the plane. It wasn’t what we wanted. To err on the side of caution, we decided it was best to skip the plane ride and go for the Seabiscuit.”

A renovated inner turf course, increased overnight purses, and a somewhat-bolstered stakes program highlight the changes as Aqueduct opens Friday for its fall meet.

One year after the New York Racing Association replaced the inner dirt track with a new turf course, the older turf course – now referred to as the inner turf course – underwent its first significant renovation since the mid-1970s. In May, new Kentucky bluegrass sod was installed along with a new sand drainage layer and an improved irrigation system.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – The future is now.

An additional Breeders’ Cup race for 2-year-olds plus the clever decision to package all of the now five Breeders’ Cup races for 2-year-olds on one card has produced the inaugural Future Stars Friday for the Breeders’ Cup, highlighted by the Juvenile.