sport world

Sometimes, through divine intervention, horses wind up with the right owners. Such was the case with Zenyatta and the brilliant filly Songbird, who was retired Thursday by owner Rick Porter after being diagnosed with damage to her hind suspensories and a severe bone chip. If not for Jerry and A Moss, who relied on the expert horsemanship of trainer John Shirreffs, we never would have been blesse...

ARCADIA — Trainer Jerry Hollendorfer’s assistant, Dan Ward, echoed jockey Mike Smith’s sentiments about Songbird drawing the rail for Friday’s $2 million Breeders’ Cup Distaff at Santa Anita. Songbird, the 6-5 moing-line favorite, brings an 11-0 record into the 1 1/8-mile race. She’s 7-0 this year and has won four Grade I stakes in three states. “It’s really not a conce,” Ward said. “She’s drawn the rail three times in the past and you know the result. This is going to be a very tough race, so I look at it as us having the shortest distance home.” Songbird’s three races when starting from the rail? All three resulted in gate-to-wire victories. She won by 6 1/2 lengths in her career debut in...

RIO DE JANEIRO >> It was all so strikingly familiar, the Olympic Games women’s 1,500 meter final playing out almost step for step as Genzebe Dibaba’s world-record shattering triumph at last year’s World Championships in Beijing. And with two laps remaining the Ethiopian, as if following the same script, took off just as she had a year earlier with a move so bold it was mind boggling. Then in the final 200 meters, Dibaba and the race ran off script. Kenya’s Faith Kipyegon flew past Dibaba and then continued to pull away from the world champion all the way to the finish line for a 4 minute, 8.92 second victory at the Olympic Stadium Tuesday night that raised as many questions as it answe...

BEVERLY HILLS — The best way Sarah Hammer can describe her sport is organized chaos. The Redondo Beach native and Temecula Chaparral High School graduate will be competing in bicycle track racing at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics. It is not just time-trial racing, one or two cyclists on the track at the same time. It’s more like NASCAR short-track racing with 43 cars banging into each other every lap on a half-mile oval. In this case, it is 20 cyclists practically ruing into each other on a 250-meter banked oval track. “It looks ugly,” Hammer said of some aspects of her sport. “People are blown up all over the place. It’s not that fluid like a beautiful team. “So one of the big things is ...

ARCADIA >> If Saturday’s $200,000 Grade II Summertime Oaks at Santa Anita was the last time Southe Califoia racing fans are treated to watching Songbird run before the Breeders’ Cup in November, the brilliant 3-year-old daughter of Medaglia d’Oro gave ’em something to remember. Songbird, who missed the Kentucky Oaks after she spiked a low-grade fever shortly after wiing the Santa Anita Oaks, retued to the races in grand fashion, beating Bellamentary by 6 1/2 lengths to run her record to 8-0. She’s won her races by a combined 42 1/2 lengths. Her jockey, Hall of Famer Mike Smith, called her “freaky” after the race. “If there was someone in front of her to make her focus and make her run...