BREEDERS' CUP COMES OF AGE IN TEXAS CHAMPIONSHIP FEST COULD BE 'CATALYST' FOR LONE STAR RACING.

Byline: Kevin Modesti Staff Writer

The Breeders' Cup thoroughbred races go to Lone Star Park, in Grand Prairie, Texas, next Saturday to turn 21 and celebrate a coming of age.

The annual festival of championship races has bounced among stately old tracks such as Santa Anita, Belmont Park and Churchill Downs for most of its young history, always looking like an adolescent putting his expensive sneakers up on a White House dinner table.

But this time, for the first time, the Breeders' Cup lands at a track that's younger than the event itself. The Breeders' Cup made its debut at Hollywood Park in 1984. Lone Star Park opened its betting windows in 1997. Texas didn't even legalize horse racing until 1987.

Staging Saturday's eight races, with purses totaling $14 million, will put a Texas hoofprint on the sport's history, in which the state has chiefly been known as the birthplace of Hall of Fame jockey Bill Shoemaker and 1946 Triple Crown winner Assault.

``In the next 10 years, horse racing and breeding is going to absolutely take off in the state of Texas,'' said Corey Johnsen, president of Lone Star Park, which has sunk $8.5 million into event preparations, including the temporary expansion of seating to 50,000. ``We see the Breeders' Cup serving as a catalyst.''

As usual, the Breeders' Cup results figure to decide the winners of the year-end Eclipse Award championships for horses and humans. If Pleasantly Perfect repeats his 2004 victory at Santa Anita in the $4 million Breeders' Cup Classic, the 6-year-old trained in Arcadia by Richard Mandella will all but clinch the Horse of the Year title. His Classic competition will come from Birdstone, Funny Cide, Ghostzapper, Roses in May and Perfect Drift.

For the owners, trainers and jockeys of the 100 horses pointing for the races - and for horseplayers chasing a multimillion-dollar pick-six pool - the first challenge of Breeders' Cup week is to figure out how the venue might affect competition. Only seven of the horses eligible to be entered officially on Wednesday have raced at Lone Star, and only Breeders' Cup Sprint candidates Gold Storm (3 for 4 at the track) and Bay Marvel (2 for 2) are based there.

Surprisingly, Lone Star hasn't held a race at 1 1/4 miles - the Breeders' Cup Classic distance - since the Dallas-area track's inaugural year.

Lone Star's dirt main oval is 1 mile around with slightly banked turns, standard for North American tracks. But the 930 feet from the turn to the wire makes the homestretch shorter than average, giving horses with early speed an edge over come-from-behinders who have less room to unwind winning rallies.

The main track is the site for the Classic, the 1 1/8-mile Distaff, the 6- furlong Sprint and the 1 1/16-mile Juvenile and Juvenile Fillies.

Said Mandella: ''I haven't found tracks that my horse (Pleasantly Perfect) hasn't liked, so I see no reason for concern.''

Lone Star's 7-furlong turf course, inside the main track, has an infield starting chute, but the Mile, the 1 1/2-mile Turf and the 1 3/8-mile Filly & Mare Turf will begin on the oval. The configuration has forced the Filly & Mare Turf to change from its normal 1 1/4 miles. The race will start on the backstretch, too close to the far turn for the comfort of horses from outside post positions.

This will be the 21st Breeders' Cup and the third held outside the traditional U.S. racing capitals of California, New York, Kentucky and Florida. It was at Woodbine in Toronto in 1996 that Alphabet Soup beat Cigar in the Classic, and at Arlington Park near Chicago in 2002 that Volponi's Classic upset touched off the pick-six scandal.

Warm weather, expected in Dallas in the next week, usually has worked against horses from Europe. Ouija Board, the English and Irish Oaks winner who's eligible to run in the Turf or the Filly & Mare Turf - and could be favored in the latter - is among eight Europe-based horses aiming for the grass races that foreign horses have dominated over the years.

For fans of Southern California horses, other races to watch will be the Distaff, likely to have Azeri; the Juvenile and Juvenile Fillies, with Roman Ruler and Sweet Catomine favored; and the Sprint, with Kela among seven horses connections here.

Kevin Modesti, [phone]

heymodesti(at)aol.com

21ST BREEDERS' CUP

When: Saturday, 10 a.m.-3 p.m., Ch. 4

Where: Lone Star Park, Grand Prairie, Texas

What: 8 races, $14 million in purses

CAPTION(S):

box

Box:

21ST BREEDERS' CUP (see text)