DEL MAR – In the slowly brightening light about a half-hour before sunrise Sunday at Del Mar Racetrack, a jockey wearing a white windbreaker climbed aboard a bay 3-year-old colt for the first time.

Normally this wouldn’t be worth mentioning, but this wasn’t just any jockey introducing himself to just any colt. And it’s not just any race they’ll be competing in Saturday afternoon.

The jockey was Jose Ortiz, one of the best in the world. The colt was Journalism, one of the best in the country. And the race is the $7 million Breeders’ Cup Classic, the richest run each year in North America.

Not two weeks earlier, such a pairing was as unlikely as a Del Mar beach house selling for less than seven figures.

But on Oct. 17, Rancho Santa Fe resident Aron Wellman, managing director of Eclipse T

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