Upbeat New York is ready to race

After the flurry of activity that is daily morning exercise, barn staff hang out, catching rays and listening to music, while trainers field questions from clock-watchers about how Classic contender Albert The Great worked five furlongs in 1:02 yesterday, compared with 1:05 this time last year.

Wallowing in such blissful minutiae, it seems almost rude to interrupt all this horse- talk with profundities.

But the pictures of US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on the screen usually dedicated to betting shows, next to those beamed from Philadelphia Park racetrack, are a discordant reminder of more significant events elsewhere.

There are others. So close is Belmont to what New Yorkers now call Ground Zero that some emergency services based their rescue efforts from its car parks. The grim cloud that hung for days where the twin towers of the World Trade Center once stood was clear from the grandstand-This 18th Breeders' Cup is dedicatedto "New York's heroes". Local jockey Jerry Bailey has pledged five per cent of any winnings to the disaster charities.

In Garden City, stars-and-stripes flap from expensively draped windows. One forthright gal, driving through the Belmont barns, had a poster of Osama bin Laden on her chevy with the words 'Wanted: dead, not alive'.

But these heavy notes are remarkably few and tend to be sounded by those from out of town. Perhaps we're a beat behind New Yorkers in recovering from their own tragedy.

"Being around the horses - it'll take your mind off almost everything," admitted Joe Orseno, 46, born in Philadelphia but resident trainer at Belmont since 1996.

After his Breeders' Cup double of Juvenile and Filly & Mare Turf last year, with Macho Uno and Perfect Sting, he was awarded the CV Whitney Award for special achievement in New York racing.

Injury retired his filly, but Orseno hopes Classic entry Macho Uno can become the first horse to win different Cup events.

"It was hard to do normalcy the first week after the attacks - you didn't know what to expect," he recalled. "I haven't seen Ground Zero and, being at the racetrack so early each day, you don't get to see the City wake up. So life's more normal for us than probably anybody because nothing's really changed here.

"But the racing community was touched by what happened. Everyone has their own story - I know somebody who was on the phone to his wife at the time the plane hit and she died in the building.

"I live close to JFK airport where fighter pilots now fly overhead at midnight.

"They've stepped up security here. Now you've got to show your badge at the gate, even though it's the same guy you've seen every day for the past five years."

There was talk, denied by Cup organisers, of switching the event to Kentucky's Churchill Downs in the immediate aftermath of 11 September. Orseno, like every New Yorker expressing an opinion, believes it's important it stayed put.

"If we change things, the terrorists win," he said. "That was their plan and it didn't work. We're taking a stand."

Then the conversation moved smoothly back to the racing. Back to the galvanising effect of Macho Uno's blinkers, his relative inexperience versus the boon of being a fresh horse. Back to who'll be top banana this Saturday.