Column: California Chrome and unbeaten Shared Belief to race at Breeders’ Cup

For the third straight year, Santa Anita will be home base for horse racing’s annual cash call, also known as the Breeders’ Cup.

This year’s event, Friday and Saturday, will distribute $24.5 million over 13 races, four on Friday and nine on Saturday. It will mark the eighth time that Santa Anita Park has hosted since this racing extravaganza began at Hollywood Park in 1984. Churchill Downs has also held the Breeders’ Cup eight times.

After the event is held at Keeneland in Lexington, Ky., next fall, it will return to Santa Anita in 2016 and then on to Del Mar, for the first time, in 2017.

This year’s Breeders’ Cup has been a little slow out of the gate, with the withdrawals of two of the biggest stars in the sport.

Wise Dan, two-time horse of the year and winner of the last two Breeders’ Cup Miles, recently suffered a recent non-displaced fracture in his right front leg. Beholder, last year’s winner of the Breeders’ Cup Distaff, formerly the Ladies’ Classic, came down with a fever.

Another big story leading into the event is the return of Hall of Fame jockey Gary Stevens, who last year, at age 50, rode Beholder in the Distaff and took Mucho Macho Man to victory in the event’s feature, the $5-million Classic. Stevens, who also won last year’s Preakness aboard Oxbow, continued to have problems with his right knee and had knee-replacement surgery in July.

He will ride an Irish horse named Sivoliere in Friday’s Juvenile Filly Turf. Sivoliere has won three of her five starts, none under Stevens.

As always, the $5-million Classic, the richest race in this country, will generate the most stories and anticipation. In a race usually dominated by older horses, a pair of 3-year-olds may steal the spotlight.

It will mark the first matchup of the star of the Triple Crown season, California Chrome, and unbeaten Shared Belief, who was injured during Triple Crown racing time. Chrome won the Kentucky Derby and Preakness and then, with the Triple Crown at stake, finished a disappointing fourth in the Belmont. The horse that won the Belmont, Tonalist, is also entered in the Classic.

Shared Belief (7-0) won the Grade I Awesome Again Stakes at Santa Anita in September. California Chrome prepped for the Classic by racing in the East and finishing sixth in the Philadelphia Derby last month.

A sidelight in the Classic may be the competition between the jockeys aboard Shared Belief and California Chrome. In the Awesome Again, veteran jockey Mike Smith, aboard Shared Belief, felt he had been blocked by two horses trained by Bob Baffert. One of them was ridden by Victor Espinoza, who will be aboard California Chrome in the Classic.

Smith is the all-time record-holder in Breeders’ Cup victories with 20, five ahead of Jerry Bailey.

California Chrome, who trains at Los Alamitos and became beloved by millions during his Triple Crown run, may be racing for the last time. Co-owner Perry Martin was quoted recently in the Sacramento Bee as saying, “It’s race-by-race now. A good Breeders’ Cup Classic and we’ll keep going. A clunker and he’s off to the breeding barn.”

bill.dwyre@latimes.com

Twitter: @DwyreLATimes