Santa Anita is one of the most important and historic tracks in
American racing and an injury-free Breeders’ Cup will be the overriding aim as the course sets out to redeem its reputationJohn Gosden and Santa Anita go back a long way. He set up as a trainer at the track with just three horses back in 1979, and his typically eloquent assessment of the course’s recent travails earlier this week had an elegiac quality too.
“I remember being at Santa Anita in winters where it rained for 40 days straight,” he said. “They had a very wet winter this year and when that happens they have to seal the track, and you’re racing on the slop onto a sealed base which they then float, and it’s not a nice surface.