A breath of fresh air -- a deep breath, too

Central City can breathe more easily now. Literally.

A threat in the Breeders' Cup Turf Sprint, which will be run Saturday here at Churchill Downs, Central City would chug and roar around the racetrack not too very long ago, sounding like a steam locomotive rapidly losing steam, caught in some pneumatic moil of resperatory desperation. That's how his trainer, Ronny Werner, got away with once running the colt for a claiming price of $10,000. Nobody who had seen and heard Central City on the track possibly could have claimed him, not a horse with such a wheeze, indicative, of course, of a serious breathing problem, laryngeal hemiplegia.