Mike Smith popped by Saratoga Race Course on Thursday to hop aboard 2-year-old Tiny Woods in the Saratoga Special. The colt finished seventh after displacing his palate, but Smith didn't mind. His big horse is safe and sound back in California. Life is all Zen for Smith these days  the star of the reality TV show Jockeys (which premieres this evening at 10 Eastern) has the mount aboard one of the nation's top runners. Zenyatta, unbeaten in 12 starts, is training toward a start in the Breeders' Cup Classic or Breeders' Cup Ladies Classic late this fall, and Smith will be in the irons. I stopped in the jocks' quarters at Saratoga to talk with Smith about his connection with this talented racemare. "She's really intelligent," Smith said. "She's just full of personality and she's learned to enjoy what she does. She puts a show on and she just loves the cameras and loves to ham it up. She just goes out there and performs, man, she does it every time." The 5-year-old daughter of Street Cry is a late closer, and I asked Smith if he ever felt concerned about that come-from-behind style, especially considering the closeness of the duo's last race (they won the Clement L. Hirsh Stakes by a head). "I felt it all the time that I was gonna win, even though it was a head," he said. "As long as they run for you when you call on them, that's the key. The only thing you worry about in a situation coming from behind all the time is traffic or having to go too wide, but so far she's been able to overcome it. It's funny that when she has to go wide it's only for a jump or two, it seems like, and then she can do whatever she wants because usually she's run by the competition. So hopefully it stays that way. She really reserves herself; she's just full of run at the end, and when you get a horse that reserves themselves like that, they're gonna run big every time." I asked Smith if there's a horse who can look Zenyatta in the eye, especially given the recent cry for a matchup with Preakness and Haskell Invitational winner Rachel Alexandra. "I haven't ran with one yet," he told me. "I'm not going to sit here and knock Rachel Alexandra, though it's just an opinion, what I have to say right now, until we both show up together. Let's race and see, that's what the championship's for, that's what the Breeders' Cup is for, to let the best of the best run against each other." Watching Calvin Borel aboard Rachel Alexandra, it almost seems as if the filly moves on her own at exactly the right moment. I asked Smith if his mount did the same thing. "She knows the drill, she knows how to run, she knows when to catch them. But she'll wait for me, she waits for me really, really good. There's been times where I've waited, I didn't want to make it yet, and she knows when to do it, but she usually waits for me to cue her. Or she'll do it on her own and if I really need her I just ask her and she gives me other gears. I don't know how many are there. I hope I never have to get to the end of them," he said.