East Coast racing fans, don't despair. From Oaklawn's Racing Festival of the South, it's a sentence that will make the heart sing: Zenyatta, coming soon to a racetrack near you! 

 

Of course the champion racemare must run well in tomorrow's Apple Blossom Handicap and come out of that event in good order. She'll ship back to the California base of trainer John Shirreffs, and her next start will likely be announced from there.

 

But this year calls for a campaign of different sorts than Zenyatta's previous seasons, when she raced only in California except for a win in the 2008 Apple Blossom. With the Breeders' Cup World Thoroughbred Championships to be held on the dirt track at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Ky., the unbeaten daughter of Street Cry would do well to prep over similar surfaces in her pursuit of a 2010 Breeders' Cup victory. And those surfaces are not to be found in Southern California, where all the tracks are now composed of various synthetic materials.   

 

"We'd definitely like to be at Belmont at some point, and we'd like to be at Churchill Downs for a prep race leading into the Breeders' Cup if possible," owner Jerry Moss remarked Thursday morning. "Those two tracks for sure would be on our radar if the right race came up and she was ready to go."

 

"We want to let everybody see her, we're proud of her," Ann Moss said "It's exciting when she appears somewhere. She's a star, no doubt about her."

 

It is ironic that Zenyatta, chasing her 16th straight victory without a loss and the Eclipse Award-winning older mare of 2008 and 2009, would be knocked by doubters for her lack of dirt form considering her connections' adamant dislike of synthetic surfaces. Moss, a member of the California Horse Racing Board, abstained from a vote when the organization moved to mandate the installation of synthetic surfaces at the major racetracks in South California in 2006. 

 

"There was a torrent for synthetic tracks (in California)," he said. "Off one season at Turfway, they were all ready to change everything. I thought it was just crazy at the time, and I still do. Yet I can't complain about Zenyatta. She's been amazing on it. Just absolutely incredible on it."

 

Nevertheless, racing pundits would have liked to see the big bay mare run more on the dirt, and her lack of starts over the traditional surface may have cost her Horse of the Year honors in 2008, when she lost to Curlin, and in 2009, when she was passed over for Rachel Alexandra.

 

"We've always looked at the Breeders' Cup as our focus, and the Breeders' Cup, just for what it's worth, was in LA for two years in a row," Moss said. "And that wasn't our choosing. Did it make it easier to run there and train there? Sure."

 

"Would we rather have run on dirt?" Ann Moss interjected. "Absolutely. Would we still rather run on dirt? Absolutely."

 

"But we're forward-looking people," Moss said. "We show up and we try to run against whoever else shows up. That's all we've ever done and that's all we'll keep on doing - we think we've got a really tremendous horse here, without tooting our trumpet too hard. Whomever wants to chase her, we welcome. And everybody's formidable; anything can happen in a horse race."

 

 

Zenyatta schooled in the paddock at Oaklawn Park at 11:30 am. on Thursday afternoon, following a fabulous morning gallop around the oval. The big bay mare was dappled and in fine form, on the muscle but mentally collected. She followed her trip to the paddock with a visit to the infield, where she paused to look over the fence at action near the concession stands. She also threw in a few strides of her signature "Zenyatta dance," neck bowed and front legs prancing in a long-reaching movement, as she returned to the barn on a long walk via the dirt oval.

 

Following Zenyatta's appearance, trainer Tim Ice put Arkansas Derby contender New Madrid through similar paces. The son of Rock Hard Ten, fresh off a March 13 maiden score at Oaklawn, comes into Saturday's race in similar fashion to 2009 champion 3-year-old Summer Bird, who ran third in the Arkansas Derby off his maiden win last year en route to victories in the Belmont Stakes, Travers, and Jockey Club Gold Cup.