In Los Angeles this weekend for the Breeders’ Cup.  It’s my final week of 2013 vacation and my 17th consecutive Cup on site.

While I lost my zeal for attending the Kentucky Derby and ended a streak of being at the Downs for 19 straight runs for the roses, I’ve remained devoted to the Breeder’s Cup for its simpler-to-maneuver and easier-to-afford experience.

Jeff D and I have found a reliably nice, affordable motel near Santa Anita in Pasadena and have enjoyed good seats in recent years thanks to our pal Carsoni who regularly scores an extra pair for participating in a Cup-related handicapping contest.

The Cup (now in its 30th year) no longer varies its site annually.  The powers-that-be seem to have found a home in Santa Anita, where the weather is reliable and the massive main plant and parking lot make a good fit for the 30 or 40-thousand racing fans who travel here from all over the US and Western Europe.  This year’s event at Santa Anita is the fourth time in six years the races are being run here after a cold, rain-soaked flop of a Cup at Monmouth in 2007.

While I’m glad to see the Cup now shun undersized tracks like Monmouth, Arlington Park and Gulfstream, I’d prefer a three-way rotation of this country’s biggest thoroughbred facilities:  Santa Anita, Churchill Downs and Belmont Park.  The latter is of course in my backyard and boasts two world-class turf courses capable of enticing great grass runners from England, Ireland, France and Germany. Unfortunately, the entity that operated Belmont during much of its recent Cup drought was deemed incapable of hosting the event both by the Cup board and some of the New York racing honchos who have since been deposed.  Even now with its head peeking out of a dog house of its own making, New York racing is believed to either be disinterested or not yet ready to take on Cup hosting responsibilities.  Churchill flat out doesn’t want it given the lack of rake its seeking from the event and so here we are in a locale that’s great even if we keep coming back to it year after year.

Much has been made about the “watering-down” of the Breeders’ Cup  In the run-up to this event, Cup founder John Nerud told thoroughbred racing writer Jay Hovdey that the Cup in its current form has been “screwed up.”  Nerud says there are too many races of too little importance being labeled Cup events.  The cornerstone of Nerud’s plan to revitalize the Cup is a $3 million purse for two-year-old colts to set the stage for a heightened pitch of Derby fever going into the first few months of the calendar year.  Nerud would disband some of the lesser races (the Marathon, for example) and use the purse money to make the Classic a $10 million race.  While sweetening the pot for juvies is a bad idea given their fragility and the sport’s emphasis on nurturing Derby entrants slowly, I’d support a big payday in the feature as long as the two big turf races (the Mile and Turf) are not negatively impacted.

I flew into LAX Thursday morning on a 630 AM non-stop out of JFK  Many passengers on the five-hour, twenty-minute trip snoozed with window shades pulled down.  I got all three major NYC newspapers for the ride and not one of them wrote any kind of a story about the Breeder’s Cup in their sports pages.

I’m most excited to see The Fugue win Saturday’s mile-and-a-half grass race.  Yeah, she’ll only be 5-2, but she’ll blow the doors off the Cup Turf field as long as the course isn’t rock hard.  If you do end up seeing dust kicked up on that grass when they run the Turf sprint 77 minutes earlier, The Fugue will still win – but not by as much as he would on a course with even just a touch of forgiveness.

There will be no game seven of the World Series to watch at a bar tonight.  But there will be a bar to sit in regardless.