ELMONT, N.Y. - Competing from coast to coast, he has won all 10 of his races. San Francisco thoroughbred aficionados consider him the best horse based there since Seabiscuit in the 1930s.

Thanks to Laura Hillenbrand's book and the film based on it, America has rediscovered Seabiscuit. Meanwhile, the ongoing success story of Lost in the Fog seemingly has been lost in translation.

If Lost in the Fog wins Saturday's $1 million Breeders' Cup Sprint at Belmont Park, he will have an excellent shot at becoming America's Horse of the Year. But he is the best-kept secret in the nation's sports sections.

The reasons Lost in the Fog has stayed hidden are threefold:

Though he is a 3-year-old, owner Harry Aleo and trainer Greg Gilchrist chose not to run him in the Triple Crown races for 3-year-olds, by far the most glamorous and best-publicized events in the sport.

He has competed exclusively in high-quality sprint races, ranging from 5 to 7 furlongs and generally used as steppingstones toward the longer, more lucrative and more prestigious races.

San Francisco is world-renowned for its beauty and elegance. But its tracks, Golden Gate Fields and Bay Meadows, are the Oaklands of the racing world.

Lost in the Fog has run only three times at those tracks.

He was a 7 1/2-length winner in the first start of his career last Nov. 4 against maidens in the mud at Golden Gate Fields. He won a $90,000 ungraded stakes race there by 10 lengths in a career-best 6-furlong time of 1 minute 74/5 seconds on May 14. And he routed older horses by 7 3/4 lengths when he made his last start Oct. 10 in the $100,000 Bay Meadows Speed Handicap.

His other races have been at Gulfstream and Calder in Florida; at Aqueduct, Belmont and Saratoga in New York; and at Turf Paradise in Arizona.

"This is his seventh trip back and forth across the country," Gilchrist said. "It takes a special horse to do that."

When Lost in the Fog was at Gulfstream and Aqueduct last spring, he took two Kentucky Derby prep races, the Swale and the Bay Shore. He also won the Riva Ridge at Belmont the same day as the Belmont Stakes, and he took the King's Bishop at Saratoga the same day as the Travers.

But Gilchrist was never tempted to run him in the classic races.

"There wasn't going to be time to prepare him properly to run a mile and a quarter (at the Kentucky Derby) on the first Saturday in May," he said. "I think we made the right decision.

"It's not just losing one race. It's the repercussions from that race."

The Breeders' Cup offers compelling evidence that the Kentucky Derby extracted a heavy physical toll on most of its 20 contestants. Only two will be competing Saturday_ninth-place Flower Alley and 15th-place Sun King in the $4 million Classic.

"A lot of people are more concerned with finding what a horse can't do than enjoying what he can do," Gilchrist said. "I told the owner: `You know he can sprint and you know he ships well. When we run out of options to sprint, I think that would be the time to try the routes.' I certainly would not worry about running the horse a mile."

This will be the second time Gilchrist has run a horse in a Breeders' Cup race. In 1994, his 4-year-old filly, Soviet Problem, lost to Cherokee Run in a photo finish in the Sprint.

"I've had a lot of good horses," said Gilchrist, who has saddled more than 1,300 winners since he returned from combat in Vietnam with the Army's 82nd Airborne Division and took out his trainer's license in 1973. "But this is the best horse I've ever trained."

Gilchrist paid $140,000 in the spring of 2004 to acquire the unraced Florida-bred son of the stakes-winning sire Lost Soldier and the unraced mare Cloud Break.

"Greg liked him immediately," Aleo said. "We were the underbidder (at the Ocala Breeders' Sale). Because the owner placed too high a reserve on him he went through the ring unsold, and we purchased him privately a couple of weeks later."

Aleo, who owns a San Francisco real estate agency, signed a Brooklyn Dodgers minor-league contract as a third baseman. But his baseball career ended because of an arm injury. He joined the Army in World War II and fought in the Battle of the Bulge.

After a former son-in-law gave him an article titled "How To Make Money When Your Horse Loses," Aleo began buying thoroughbreds as a hobby in 1979 and met Gilchrist shortly thereafter. Since then Aleo has had several outstanding horses.

But Lost in the Fog has been one of a kind. He knows how to make money, as witnessed by his $889,075 bankroll. And he hasn't learned how to lose.