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For a third straight year, the Breeders' Cup will be held at Santa Anita Park in 2014. But Is the spirit of the Breeders' Cup being compromised?

Had Orb followed his dominant Kentucky Derby victory with another in the Preakness, his name would be on the tips of a million tongues and discussion of his Belmont Stakes prospects would dominate the conversation at every racetrack, betting shop and saloon in the land.

Oxbow was spotted the first six furlongs in Saturday's Preakness Stakes, his Hall of Fame jockey would take it from there.

Belmont Park is Orb's home track and the scene of probably his best work on Monday, but before he gets a chance to take down the Triple Crown he will have to conquer the Preakness.

The Churchill Downs landscape, the Kentucky Derby and the city that is home to both have undergone dramatic evolution since the last Derby winner won the Triple Crown.

No matter how you turn the page, none of those generally regarded at the principal threats to win the 139th Kentucky Derby comes into focus.

The point system that now determines admission to the Kentucky Derby's field of 20, while not immune to criticism, appears to have served its purpose.

A month out, this is already the most highly anticipated of recent renewals of America's race, one graced by a wealth of developing talent.

Orb is a Derby horse in every respect.

Paul Moran remembers the glorious Triple Crown run of the great Secretariat

At the point where winter grudgingly gives way to spring there is often a tendency to dismiss the season's new 3-year-olds who have to some degree shown sufficient promise to merit consideration as Kentucky Derby prospects.

The Kentucky Derby ritual begins with the walkover, the procession every owner of a thoroughbred aspires to experience. But where does the race get its mystique?

After coffee, the first order of business is the week's first offering from Aqueduct. But, not today.

The fledgling NYRA Reorganization Board is set to consider replacing the surface of the Aqueduct inner track, which has performed remarkably well since the mid 1970s, with a synthetic surface.

While racing folk have spent decades in frustrated search of a genuine star and found few, the hunt could not possibly have gotten more far afield than it did in 2012.

The Mayans were wrong. Now, the real danger looms.