Racing: Rehearsal fails to calm fears for Applause

The British challenge for Saturday's Breeders' Cup must adapt to the strange surroundings of Hollywood Park. As Richard Edmondson reports from Los Angeles, the main hope for the Sprint has not had a good start.

They say it's a bad 'hood in this part of Los Angeles, not the sort of place where you want to be spreading the picnic blanket with the family. Word is that if you take the wrong turn out of the track at Inglewood they award you a free body bag. The trouble is you have to go home in it.

Hollywood Park, which hosts Breeders' Cup XIV on Saturday, no longer carries the celebrity perfume with which it opened in 1938, when Bing Crosby, Walt Disney and Sam Goldwyn were among the stockholders. The arena has also changed considerably since the championships were last here in 1987. A huge casino has come on site to collect those punters who manage to make money on the ponies, while five million gallons of water are held in the sculpted infield as the course plays again on its sobriquet as "the Track of the Lakes and Flowers".

There are palms on course here tall enough to frighten a monkey, vast beds of impatiens, fountains and waterfalls playing home to flamingos and other fowl. As soon as the horses have passed during track work flocks of red-eyed starlings land to pick through the dirt in temperatures which yesterday reached 93 degrees. It does not remind you of home.

Royal Applause has not yet got over the culture shock. Having performed a back somersault in the stalls on Saturday which would have been a thunderous climax to a gymnastic floor exercise, Barry Hills's colt was merely led in and out of the barrier from different directions yesterday. He will go to post on Saturday without experience of either the bell or a stallhandler leaning into his premises.

Singspiel had a day off yesterday after a half-speed piece of work over seven furlongs on Sunday. Carmine Lake and Decorated Hero were similarly redundant, though their activity was in the less salubrious surroundings of Blighty following the cancellation of their flights on Sunday. They will now arrive today, along with the German filly Borgia.

The Americans remain astonished that Singspiel is not running in the Classic, and Stoute pretends he does not understand the answer either. "We talked it through after he won at York in August and Sheikh Mohammed said he wanted to go for the Turf," the trainer said. "I don't know why. I didn't ask him."

Stoute also remains elusive about whether Singspiel will run on the anti- bleeding agent Lasix, as he did both in the Turf last year and the Canadian International. "We'll let you know about that later in the week," he said. Take that as "yes".

As the Breeders' Cup comes to Los Angeles for the fifth time (Santa Anita has also hosted twice), Hollywood Park ties with Churchill Downs as the most popular venue on the series roster.

It was here in 1984 that Don MacBeth steered home Chief's Crown, who went on to sire our Derby winner Erhaab, in the first ever Breeders' Cup race. Royal Heroine won the Mile for Robert Sangster and John Gosden in the days when the trainer enjoyed the delights of southern California (movie capital of the world, constant sunshine) before turning it in for Newmarket (no cinema whatsoever, wind). Gosden is back here for Decorated Hero's run and is already mightily pleased following Ryafan's victory in the Yellow Ribbon Stakes across town at Santa Anita on Sunday.

Three years after Royal Heroine's Mile, another filly, Miesque, won the same race and Bill Shoemaker won the Classic on Ferdinand, his only win in the series. The Shoe remains the winningmost jockey in the world, having made 8,883 winning trips around the racecoure and amassing $123m in purses. The most influential journey of his life though came the year after riding retirement in 1990, when the vehicle he was driving slipped off the road and left him paralysed from the neck down.

Shoemaker's training career also ended in California this week when the little man announced he could not carry on any longer. Like Dick Hern on another continent, his influence had waned yet his departure removes a considerable block from the fabric of the sport.