IT’S 55 degrees. And raining. And everyone is asking why the Breeders’ Cup isn’t run in California every year. Welcome to Churchill Downs.

By the time you’re reading this, five Breeders’ Cup races will have been run in varying degrees of a sloppy main track and a soft turf course. Want to make God laugh? Tell him your plans.

And now I’m meant to preview and pick the races two days before they run, not knowing the exact track conditions and how the track is playing. Talk about making God laugh.

And, a few more words of caution, I’m a paddock handicapper, I make my best choices when I see the horses, so tread lightly with these keyboard selections. But, here goes.

9.44 BREEDERS’ CUP

CLASSIC (GRADE 1)

(3YO+) (DIRT) 1M 2F ATR

A letdown? Well, let’s just put it this way, there are no Arc winners in the Classic. Nor is there a Kentucky Derby winner, a previous Breeders’ Cup Classic winner or an established marquis horse. Good horses, certainly, but perhaps no icons. Yet?

No icons but plenty of questions.

Let’s go one by one.

Thunder Snow: Can he improve off his runner-up placein the Jockey Club Gold Cup in September and once and for all, erase the memory of his War Paint impersonation in last year’s Derby?

Roaring Lion: Can he transfer his turf form to a sloppy track, which sometimes is easier than dirt?

Catholic Boy: Can the three-year-old take the next step after winning three straight, including the Travers?

Gunnevera: Can Irad Ortiz Jr. finally deliver a perfect trip for the long-striding four-year-old who has had more rough trips than Clark Griswold?

Lone Sailor: Can he shock the world?

McKinzie: Can the once-beaten three-year-old become Baffert’s next big horse?

West Coast: Can he improve three and a half lengths from last year’s Classic third behind Gun Runner and does he have to improve that much?

Pavel: Can the California shipper make up 12½ lengths on Accelerate?

Mendelssohn: Can the talented yet mercurial three-year-old win his first race since the UAE Derby and offer closure (or freedom) to Aidan O’Brien and Coolmore’s great dirt experiment/quest?

Yoshida: Can the Japanese-bred colt add a second straight stakes win on dirt after spending his first 10 starts on the turf?

Mind Your Biscuits: Can the New York-bred overachiever conjure up names like Dr Fager and Forego by stretching his six-furlong sprint speed to the stamina-searching 10 furlongs of the Classic?

Axelrod: Can the improving three-year-old go from a maiden claimer winner to a Classic winner and put former Todd Plether pupil, Michael McCarthy, on the map for good?

Discreet Lover: Can the rags-to-riches veteran write one more feel-good chapter to a story that has it all?

Accelerate: Can the California-based five-year-old win his fourth straight, stamp himself as the best older horse in the country and give trainer John Sadler, winner of nearly 2,500 races and placed in 10 Breeders’ Cup races, his first Breeders’ Cup victory?

Collected: Can the $2.9 million earner draw in off the also eligible list and further bolster Baffert’s attack.

Toast of New York: Can the seven-year-old draw in from the also eligible list, turn back time and make up for that devastating nose loss in the Classic in 2014?

SELECTIONS: Catholic Boy, Accelerate, Yoshida.