SANTA ANITA SHORTS

JAMES DOYLE is confident Hugo Palmer-trained Home Of The Brave will handle the twisting, six-and-a-half furlong downhill track in the Turf Sprint after having a spin around the course. Doyle, who also rides Charlie Hills-trained Dutch Connection in the Mile, said: ‘It’s very different but he took to it well. The race is hard to call, there’s no stand-out favourite.’

THE great Zenyatta became a Breeders’ Cup legend with wins in the 2008 Distaff, 2009 Classic and her agonising second to Blame in the 2010 Classic. Her colours of Dottie and Jerry Moss have not hit the heights since but the track gossip is the Juvenile favourite Gormley is a horse to put them back on the big stage.

TONIGHT’S run in the Classic will be the penultimate outing for California Chrome before he is retired to stud. The last will be in the new $12million Pegasus World Cup at Florida’s Gulfstrea Park in January, when the owners of all 12 runners have to put up $1m to take part.

IF LADY ELI, winner of the 2014 Juvenile Fillies Turf, can defy Seventh Heaven and Co in the Filly & Mare Turf, it will be a remarkable victory given what she has gone through. Last year she stood on a nail and then developed the potentially fatal Laminitis in both front hooves. It meant more than a year off the track but she is back in form and trainer Chad Brown said: ‘She couldn’t be working any better.’