ARCADIA — By almost any measure, thoroughbred trainer Jeff Mullins has been having his best seasons in a long time in 2024 and 2025, winning stakes in a variety of equine divisions while posting win percentages and earnings figures among the leaders in California.

What’s different from Mullins’ peak in the early 2000s is the absence of the kind of Derby prospects that brought him fame (not always comfortably) back then.

That could begin to change Saturday.

Mullins will send out the 2-year-old ridgling Intrepido with jockey Hector Berrios in the $300,000, Grade I American Pharoah Stakes at Santa Anita, seeking to earn a berth in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile on the first day of the Oct. 31-Nov. 1 Breeders’ Cup at Del Mar.

The competition is strong. Bob Baffert entered Desert Gate, Kristoff

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