ARCADIA, Calif. -- On Richard Mandella's day, it was Pleasantly Perfect's time. Under hazy skies in a 99-degree sweatbox, jockey Alex Solis turned into the stretch with dead aim on dueling front-runners Congaree and Medaglia d'Oro. Pleasantly Perfect was a longshot who was 0-for-2 at the 1 1/4-mile distance of the Breeders' Cup Classic, but you never would have suspected that as he glided to a 1 1/2-length win over Medaglia d'Oro in North America's richest race.

Medaglia d'Oro, the 5-2 favorite, and Congaree have world-class speed and they can carry 1 1/4 miles, but not when they're in the same race. They burned each other out, with Medaglia d'Oro leading by a head over Congaree after a half-mile in 46.35 seconds before Congaree went to the front. Medaglia d'Oro never gave up after Congaree went by, trailing by only half a length after a mile and by a head at the eighth pole. That's when Solis turned Pleasantly Perfect loose, capitalizing on a perfect setup on a day when everything fell into Mandella's lap.

Pleasantly Perfect, a bay son of Pleasant Colony, was timed in 1:59.88, paid $30.40 and earned $2.08 mllion for Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Grant and Thomas J. Kelly. Big money!

For those who believe in poetic justice, the 5-year-old Pleasantly Perfect had this one coming. Last year, after winning the Goodwood Handicap at Santa Anita, Pleasantly Perfect bled. He also bled after a race earlier in 2002, and Illinois racing rules forbid a horse who has bled twice in a calendar year to race for 30 days. So Pleasantly Perfect stayed home instead of going to Arlington, where Volponi shocked everyone. This time, Volponi was last of 10, five lengths behind Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner Funny Cide. Travers winner Ten Most Wanted was eighth and Perfect Drift sixth, 7 1/2 lengths behind fourth-finisher Congaree. Dynever was a non-threatening third.

On thoroughbred racing's greatest day, with $14 million on the line, the undisputed king was Mandella, the first trainer to take four Breeders' Cup races on one card. (D. Wayne Lukas won three in 1988.) Besides the $4-million Classic, Mandella, a 52-year-old Hall of Famer, swept the Juvenile and Juvenile Fillies and dead-heated in the $2-million Turf. Ten years ago, the last Breeders' Cup at Santa Anita, Mandella also dominated, winning two Cup races and two supporting stakes.

"The day I won four here last time, if I would have known I was going to do it, I could have really enjoyed it and had a great day with it," Mandella said. " But I was in shock all day, and by the time I came out of the shock and figured out what I did, everybody had gone home And I'm still in shock here.

"I didn't believe this could happen again. But it happened bigger and better."

That Mandella's quite a fella.

After an excruciatingly long photo in the Turf, Mandella said, "I'm having a very good day," the understatement of the millennium. To punctuate it, his son, Gary, trained the winner of the last race, a turf allowance. When you're that hot, it can be genetically transmitted.

Mandella, a native Californian whose father was a blacksmith, hammered out one of the most spectacular achievements in racing history. Only one of his winners, the brilliant filly Halfbridled, was favored, with the 2-year-old colt Action This Day ($55.60), Pleasantly Perfect and Johar ($13.60) helping produce a stratospheric Pick 6 playoff of more than $2.687 million. Yes, somebody did Pick 6, and there was only one winning ticket, but it wasn't the three guys who rigged last year's Breeders' Cup Pick 6.

The big loser was trainer Bobby Frankel, who went 0-for-8, including four favorites, and extended his miserable Breeders' Cup record to 2-for-57. Other kings of the turf, Lukas and Bob Baffert, also got nothing.

Total purse money for Mandella came to $4,564,080, a record that probably never will be broken. The trainer's share of 10 percent came to a juicy $456,408. Pleasantly Perfect accounted for $2.08 million after his sixth win in 13 starts. It was his fourth win at Santa Anita, where he's never been off the board in eight tries.

It was also a glorious day for Europe, which swept the grass races, the Mile, Filly & Mare Turf and Turf, although the Old World had to share the Turf with Mandella. Conservative naysayers, who predicted the Europeans would wilt amid the Southern California heat wave and that outside posts were inescapable traps, ripped up a lot of tickets. Six horses from across the Atlantic finished in the money, and there were winners from post 14 (Halfbridled), post 11 (Cajun Beat) and post 12 (Six Perfections). Conventional wisdom occasionally is right, but going against the flow is the way to play.

Irish trainer Aidan O'Brien won the Turf again with High Chapparal (in a dead heat with Johar) and ran 2-3 in the Filly & Mare Turf. He wasn't surprised by the Europeans' success, especially after an unusually warm summer over there.

"Like I said before, we're much happier coming to the heat than the cold," O'Brien said. "If you live in Ireland, like we do, you're delighted to be coming to the sun. Every human being that I know, when they come to the sun, they're in better form. And obviously the horses must be the same.

"I know it's an extreme. It's very warm. But I think that over a few days, they adapted. I think the big thing about coming to these races is to have the right horses."

A 40-1 bomber, Adoration, got the day off to an insane start by wiring the field at 40-1. Left far behind was odds-on Sightseek, a lifeless fourth for Frankel while 10 1/2 lengths back. In the Juvenile Fillies, Julie Krone overcame post 14 on 2-1 Halfbridled to earn her first win in 15 tries in the Cup. in which she hadn't had a mount since 1996. The brilliant French filly Six Perfections gave trainer Pascal Bary back-to-back wins in the Mile, rallying for Jerry Bailey in a three-quarter-length victory over Touch of the Blues. Bary knocked off Irish superstar Rock Of Gibraltar last year with 25-1 shot Domedriver. It was the third Mile win for the Niarchos family, which owned star filly Miesque (1987 and '88).

In the Sprint, 22-1 shot Cajun Beat burned thousands of Pick 6 tickets with a 2 1/2-length win in 1:07.95. Kentucky-based trainer Steve Margolis won his Breeders' Cup debut and Cornelio Velasquez got his first Cup win in only his third mount. In the Filly & Mare Turf, England finally won a Breeders' Cup race in California when Islington, Europe's best distance filly, held off O'Brien's 46-1 L'Ancresse by a neck. The Old World exacta returned $424.80. Action This Day, an obvious hunch bet for the year's biggest gambling day, surged from behind a blistering pace to take the Juvenile by 2 1/2 lengths at 26-1 odds for Mandella and David Flores.

The finish of the Turf could not have been closer, with the stewards needing nine minutes to sort out a photo between High Chaparral and Mandella's Johar, who came flying in the final strides. It was the first dead heat for win in the BC's 145 races. Tom Durkin's cry of "Too close to call!" was never more accurate.

Then came the Classic, and more glory for Mandella with Pleasantly Perfect, a horse that few took seriously. "I think he's top-notch," Mandella said. "I said it all along. He's very good. He always wanted a mile and a quarter."

Mandella was asked if he was looking forward to the next Breeders' Cup at Santa Anita.

He replied, "I think they just ought to move it here myself."