by Steve Andersen of DRF.com

Zenyatta a total pro in the morning, too
HORSE RACING, INGLEWOOD, Calif, HOLLYWOOD PARK- The high-profile numbers in Zenyatta's career are easy to remember - 14 wins, 2 championships, and 0 career losses. To get there, Zenyatta has had 81 workouts over the last three years and nine months.

And as brilliant as her races have been to her adoring fans, her workouts have left trainer John Shirreffs with the same impression. Since the first time she worked, Shirreffs says he has never walked away disappointed from one of Zenyatta's workouts. "I can't remember that," Shirreffs said last weekend.

Considering how much she has accomplished, Shirreffs may never be disappointed. Workouts seem to be one more aspect of racing that Zenyatta has conquered. The champion older female of 2008 and 2009, Zenyatta launches her 2010 campaign in Saturday's $250,000 Santa Margarita Handicap at Santa Anita, her first start in more than four months.

Following her spectacularly popular win in the Breeders' Cup Classic here in November, when she became the first female to win that race, owners Jerry and Ann Moss announced she would be retired and bred. There were glowing retirement ceremonies between races at Hollywood Park on Thanksgiving weekend and at Santa Anita on Dec. 26.

Heck, even California's governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, showed up at Hollywood Park to send her off. All the while, Zenyatta continued working, putting in three four-furlong workouts between Dec. 7 and Jan. 6, which Shirreffs described as maintenance works to keep her from becoming too eager in daily training before being sent to Kentucky to be bred.

Three weeks after the Santa Anita ceremony, on Saturday, Jan. 16, the Mosses reversed course and announced that Zenyatta would stay in training and race as a 6-year-old in 2010.

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