2011 Breeders Cup Preview Part I: The Year in Racing to Date

Churchill Downs, home of the 2011 Breeders Cup

For all the kvetching about racing getting no attention and the sport having no stars, recent years have seen a lot of memorable horses and dominant story lines, many of which have crossed into the mainstream.  Let's take a look back at the last 8 years at what were racing's memes:

• 2003: Empire Maker gets a ton of hype and buildup for the Derby as the Super Horse, but it's Funny Cide that emerges and becomes the People's Horse.

• 2004: Smarty Jones' three year old campaign lands him on the cover of SI.  If you're a little more interested in racing, you know that this is the year Ghostzapper ran lights out and establsihed himself as one of the best horses in the last 25 years.

• 2005: Afleet Alex and Alex's Lemonade Stand.

• 2006: Barbaro, Barbaro, Barbaro....

• 2007: In hindsight, there was no dominant horse or story line this year.  This was a stellar crop of three year olds (Street Sense, Curlin, Hard Spun, Discreet Cat), and Lawyer Ron turned out to be a good older horse, but nobody really dominated the scene.  Rags to Riches' Belmont was a deal, but for about 2 days.

• 2008: Big Brown, Curlin, Zenyatta's emergence, and (sadly) Eight Belles.

• 2009: Rachel Alexandra and Zenyatta.

• 2010: Zenyatta.

So now 2011 rolls around and the dominant story line is....well, not much.  It's been a fairly benign year in racing, mainly because the horses have been so inconsistent.  To wit:

• Three different horses won the Triple Crown races, and as we noted in June, this was the second most unpredictable TC series in the last 50 years.

• No three year old has won more than one Grade 1 race all year.  Last year Lookin at Lucky was the champion 2 year old and won the Preakness and Haskell, so you knew he was at least a nice enough horse.  The best 3yo this year has been... I dunno, Stay Thirsty?

• The older male horses have been equally uninteresting.  The leader in the clubhouse for the Older Male Eclipse is Tizway based on winning the Met Mile and Whitney, which were on Memorial Day and the first week of August.  You're not going to build any momentum on two wins in 5 months.  Next in line is Flat Out, who's lost to Tizway and a filly.  California has produced absolutely no horses of interest.  The most consistent male performers  have been Acclamation and Cape Blanco, who (a) ran on the turf, and (b) are now injured.

• The three year old filly crop has been replete with decent horses who keep beating each other.  All of Plum Pretty, It's Tricky, Zazu and Royal Delta appear to be nice horses, but none is a standout.

• The two horses that would have had some cache from last year's Breeders Cup, Goldikova and Uncle Mo, have had years out of the limelight.  Goldikova's absence from US racing isn't surprising--she's a European filly after all, and she's had a decent year, just far removed from US racing.  It's Uncle Mo whose absence has been felt.  He won an ungraded stakes race in Florida in March, lost the Wood Memorial when stopping badly, and missed the Derby with an alleged illness.  He re-emerged in a sprint race on the Travers undercard, where he lost by a nostril to the not-bad Caleb's Posse, then throttled Jackson Bend and Jersey Town in the 1-mile Kelso two weeks ago.  This makes him interesting for the Breeders Cup, but it hasn't been the Year of Uncle Mo, to say the least.

*          *          *

By far the most interesting horse this year has been the 4-year old filly Havre de Grace.  She emerged in the second half of last year, with narrow losses to division winner Blind Luck in the Delaware Oaks and Alabama, turned the tables on Blind Luck in the Cotillion, then ran a good third in the BC Distaff behind Unrivaled Belle and...Blind Luck.  She figured to be one of the top older females this year and hasn't disappointed.  She won a pair of graded stakes at Oaklawn--including the Grade 1 Apple Blossom--beating Blind Luck and the fast filly Switch in the process.  After winning a meaningless Delaware race, she took on Blind Luck once again in the Delaware Handicap.  The result was the best race of the season:

After posting a 106 Gowanus Speed Figure in the Delaware, Havre de Grace's connections looked at the unexciting older crop of horses and decided to take a chance by running her in the Woodward, the 9 furlong race for older horses at Saratoga Labor Day weekend, the same one Rachel Alexandra won in 2009.  Their logic was straightforward: if they weren't meeting Blind Luck, there was nothing to gain by beating other females, and the male horses weren't exactly formidable.  Sent off as the favorite, she rewarded her connections with a very strong win:

Knowing the Horse of the Year game isn't won in September, her connections wisely then sent her to the Beldame--1 1/8 miles for fillies and mares at Belmont--where she romped over pro tem 3yo filly division leader Royal Delta.  With Blind Luck out for the season with an injury, it looks like she'll go to the Breeders Cup Classic and take on the boys once again.  And in this race, she'll meet an interesting crop of horses: the aforementioned Uncle Mo, Stay Thirsty, Tizway and Flat Out, international star So You Think, and some intriguing prospects like To Honor and Serve.  If she wins the Classic, she'll be Horse of the Year in a landslide.

*          *          *

So it this the year of Havre de Grace?  Maybe.  To date she's received no attention from the non-racing press because...well, we're not sure exactly why.  She's a large and beautiful horse who's neat to watch, she does not look outmatched by colts.  Her trainer is Larry Jones of Eight Belles fame, who's very good with the media and is always sporting cowboy attire.  Her owner is Rick Porter, who some would dub insufferable, but we see as refreshing, as his barn always has fast horses entered aggressively (e.g., Eight Belles in the Derby) that run well.  And she hasn't emerged out of nowhere, because everyone in racing knew that the players in the older ladies division this year were her and Blind Luck.

Maybe it's just fatigue from the recent run of great fillies.  As we noted last year, we've had an amazing stretch of exciting fillies.  Rachel Alexandra and Zenyatta were 1-2 in HOTY voting in 2009, Zenyatta won last year, and Goldikova has been omnipresent since 2008.  Havre de Grace, while good, has none of the flamboyance of these three horses.  She isn't a steamroller on the front end like Rachel Alexandra.  She isn't an explosive closer that's always exciting like Zenyatta.  And she doesn't have the amazing versatility of Goldikova.  She's just a strong, honest, fast filly.  Given that she's accomplishing things that these other three gals have accomplished so recently, maybe we're just taking her for granted.

What that gives us is another Breeders Cup Saturday that's laden with intrigue.  We'll get to some of the other storylines in the coming days, but the big one is what happens with Havre de Grace.  If she runs in the Classic and wins, she'll have quietly put together a fabulous year for a filly, one worthy of Horse of the Year, and one that should be remembered along with recent great fillies.  And if she loses...well, it's a veritable mess, because there are a lot of holes in all the other contenders for Horse of the Year and the Classic itself.

Breeders Cup Preview Part II: Six Horses to Watch

The equine storylines for this Breeders Cup are pretty straightforward: Zenyatta going for 20-for-20, Goldikova's quest for a 3rd straight victory in the Mile, Lookin at Lucky, Blame and Quality Road all hoping to cap off good seasons and possible Horse of the Year honors in the Classic. But there are 13 other races on the cards besides the Breeders Cup Classic, and there are over 175 horses scheduled to run . Who are some of the other stars that people should know going into the Breeders Cup?

1. Uncle Mo (Juvenile). One of the strongest favorites on Saturday's card, he's a flashy two year old that dominated in his first start, winning by almost 15 lengths, and then stylishly taking the Champagne as his prep for the Breeders Cup. Despite making all of two starts, the bandwagon is already crowded, and if he wins next Saturday, it's going to be overflowing with everyone thinking they've already found the next Kentucky Derby winner. We have a little bit of extra interest in this guy because his owner (Mike Repole) is a Maspeth, Queens native and an enthusiastic guy willing to spend money. We're a little less convinced that this guy is the next Street Sense (let alone Secretariat), and think his stablemate Stay Thirsty has a shot in the Juvenile as well, but he'll be well-supported and has a big shot.

2. Workforce (Turf). The European import owned by the Prince of Saudi Arabia, he's made five starts and won three of them. That seems unimpressive on its face, except that two of his wins were the Epsom Derby--the "real Derby" according to the Brits--and Europe's biggest race, the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe. He's now trying to become the first Arc winner to also win a Breeders Cup race: eight others have tried and failed, with the closest to wining, oddly, being Sakhee's nose lose to Tiznow in the 2001 Classic. But he's got one of the best chances to pull it off, as the American contingent is unexceptional, he's lightly raced and in good form, and his trainer won the last two Turfs with Conduit. His main competition is going to be Arc-also ran Bekahbad, who's owned by His Royal Highness the Aga Khan. So not only is this a rematch of the Arc, it's a contest between the Shiites and the Sunnis in the middle of Louisville, Kentucky.

3. Blind Luck (Ladies Classic, nee Distaff). With all the hoopla around Zenyatta and Goldikova, plus the retired Rachel Alexandra, it's hard to remember that there are other accomplished fillies out there. The best of them is Blind Luck, a 3 year old filly who's never been out of the money in 14 starts. She won a pair of Grade 1's last year but was the beaten favorite in the BC Juvenile Fillies and lost the Eclipse Award to She Be Wild, who has done nothing this year. She's made up for it in spades this year by winning 3 Grade 1's, including the Kentucky Oaks and Alabama, the signature races for the 3yo fillies. She's raced at 7 tracks in 6 states this year and her worst loss was a 1 1/2 length bid to a loose-on-the-lead Switch. She's now facing her toughest challenge yet in the Ladies Classic--even without Zenyatta, the race has drawn a competitive field with older mares Life at Ten, Malibu Prayer and Unrivaled Belle and some hard-knockers from the 3yo class, including Havre de Grace (who beat Blind Luck last out in Philadelphia) and Acting Happy. Look for her flying down Churchill's long stretch late in Friday's closing race.

4. Midday (F&M Turf). With all due respect to Zenyatta, Uncle Mo and Goldikova, this horse is the strongest favorite Breeders Cup weekend. She won last year's F&M Turf pretty handily, and enters this race off three straight Grade 1 wins in Europe against much stiffer competition than she'll face next Friday. She has tactical speed, should love the distance (multiple Grade 1 wins at 10 and 12 furlongs, so 11 shouldn't be a problem), and has had a fairly light campaign this year (4 races) meaning she shouldn't be over the top. Unless the alleged Japanese star Red Desire actually turns out to be good, she's the best bet of the weekend.

5. Proviso (Mile). We could write a small treatise on the cast of characters in this year's Mile, which in addition to Goldikova, includes a horse that won two Eclipse Awards last year (Gio Ponti), the third choice in this year's Kentucky Derby (Sidney's Candy), the fourth choice in the 2008 Kentucky Derby (Court Vision), a horse that took 7 starts to break his maiden and since then hasn't been out of the exacta on the turf (The Usual Q.T.) and an eclectic mix of hard-knocking Euros (the good Paco Boy, the okay Delegator, the bad Beethoven).

But it's Proviso that we think is the most interesting contender, because she (after Zenyatta) has the second most Grade 1 wins in America this year with 4. She began her career in Europe where she was perfectly ordinary, capturing a Grade 3 stakes and placing in a pair of Grade 1's. Since coming to the States last fall, however, she's on fire, with 5 Grade 1 wins in 7 starts, her two losses being a fast-closing second on synthetic at 7 furlongs (not her best surface or distance) and a lackadaisical 4th in last year's BC Distaff, also over a synthetic surface. Since going back to the turf this year, she's won 4 straight Grade 1's, including a win over the boys in the Frank Kilroe earlier this year. Not stout enough to go 11 furlongs, she's here to take on the boys instead of staying with her own gender the Filly & Mare Turf. And if she wins, she'll have beaten the boys twice and knocked off the dominant Goldikova and won five Grade 1 races. If Zenyatta loses the Classic, is that enough to consider Proviso for Horse of the Year?

6. Crown of Thorns (Dirt Mile). Can you be the favorite in a Breeders Cup race when you haven't won a race in 32 months and are only 2-for-8 lifetime? Apparently the answer is yes. This spectacularly named son of Repent was on the Derby trail two years ago when got hurt, putting him on the sidelines for a year and a half. He came back last fall to run 3rd in an allowance race, and since then, has 4 straight runner up finishes in Grade 1 races, including last year's Breeders Cup Sprint and the Goodwood earlier this month. Trainer Richard Mandella, one of the best ever, wanted to put him in the Classic but said he's a race short, so the one-turn Dirt Mile it is. The competition is interesting but not exactly stiff: outside of Vineyard Haven and Tizway, it's full of has-beens (including Derby winner Mine That Bird!) and third-tier horses (Cool Coal Man). A fun guy to watch not only on Saturday but also next year if he stays healthy and in training.