Zenyatta’s emotional victory in the Breeders’ Cup Classic here on Saturday evening highlighted everything that is wrong with racing in Europe. She triumphed before 58,845 delirious fans, every one of them cognisant of the scale of her accomplishment.

It helped that Zenyatta is a local heroine, trained by John Shirreffs at nearby Hollywood Park. But the key is that she triumphed on her fourteenth racecourse start. That’s five more than Sea The Stars managed before he was shuffled off to stud. For a top-class thoroughbred, five races amount to an entire season’s work.

That made all the difference to Zenyatta’s public profile. It made for a collective pounding of hearts so intense that the grandstand was nearly reduced to rubble. Zenyatta’s every nuance was familiar to those who held aloft placards proclaiming “Girl Power”, “Maneater” and “Go Zenyatta” for the mare’s attempt to outrun colts for the first time. She had become the equine Lady Diana of the West Coast.

Not so Sea The Stars. Every plaudit directed at Europe’s super-horse was well deserved, but too many of them arrived with the announcement that he had been retired to stud. Only those close to the sport recognised his prowess as it unfolded. The wider world learnt of it when it was too late.

Flat racing may be having an identity crisis but all the soul-searching will come to nothing unless contemporary attitudes change. Owners of top-class horses in Europe, which essentially distil down to a cluster of Arabs and Coolmore, hold the future of the sport in their hands. They certainly wouldn’t miss the money such horses would forfeit at stud by running at four.

These entities contemplate their equine assets in the board room while the ground floor is ablaze. They are hedge fund managers too blinded by multi-million-pound transactions to see the markets crumbling beneath their feet. Besides, the pleasure a horse like Zenyatta brings is surely worth far more to them than her weight in gold bullion.

That was the experience of Jerry Moss, the Hollywood record producer who owns Zenyatta and whose wealth is paltry compared to Europe’s leading patrons. For Moss and Shirreffs, Zenyatta’s fourteenth triumph in as many starts was all the more precious for the adversity that the mare was obliged to overcome.

Upset when Quality Road delayed the start by his mulish behaviour, Zenyatta played up when she was asked to reload in the starting gate. She left it lethargically, on the wrong leg, and apparently in a tiff. Mike Smith, her jockey, wisely let her find her feet, by which time she trailed the 12-strong field into the first turn.

She was still only ninth with two furlongs to run, ten lengths behind the leader. Like Sea The Stars at Longchamp, however, she seized an opening before manoeuvring wide to cut down Gio Ponti and Twice Over with her trademark late flurry.

The mare whose early tribulations were out of character had rediscovered herself with a vengeance. Her monstrous stride when in full flight amplified the fact that she outweighed the heaviest of her male opponents by 80 kilos.

Zenyatta wasn’t the only distaffer to pluck the heartstrings. Goldikova repeated her victory in last year’s Mile with a blistering finishing kick that rendered the leaders leaden-footed. By her deeds she matched the Breeders’ Cup record of the mighty Miesque, who was ridden by the same man, Freddie Head, who now trains Goldikova.

She may yet return for a tilt at the hat-trick in 2010. Goldikova was Europe’s fifth triumph of the fixture to match last year’s record haul before Conduit, ridden for Sir Michael Stoute by Ryan Moore, sealed a sixth with a sustained challenge that proved too much for Presious Passion in the Turf. An underappreciated talent, Conduit now heads for stud duties in Japan.

One of the day’s biggest upsets saw Ahmed Ajtebi, the Dubai apprentice, win the Juvenile aboard Vale Of York for Godolphin. Ajtebi now remains in America to further his riding experience before returning to Dubai for the carnival in January.

On the debit side, Ballydoyle’s strong team could not embellish Friday’s victory by Man Of Iron in the Marathon.

Rip Van Winkle was plainly off his game when beating only two home in the Classic, while Mastercraftsman (Dirt Mile) and Viscount Nelson, in the Juvenile Turf won by the John Gosden-trained Pounced, were so pedestrian from the stalls that they might as well have stayed at home. Unlike Zenyatta, they lacked the class to recover.