It was an exciting year at the Horse Park in 2023 at the Hall of Champions. It was a bit sad during the summer that we lost two great Thoroughbreds in Hall of Famer Point Given and dual Classic-winning Kentucky Derby winner Funny Cide, but we were recently able to add two Breeders' Cup winners in Roy H–a two-time Breeders' Cup Sprint winner and two-time Eclipse Award winner–and Accelerate, one of the more exciting horses of the last 10 years, a five-time Grade I winner who won almost $7 million.

They were added at the park here in December and are settling in, getting ready for 2024.

Rob Willis is Supervisor at the Kentucky Horse Park's Hall of Champions

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What we have learned is that although each race each year has just one winner–except for that dead heat in the 2003 Turf–so many people go along for the ride.

It's impossible to count how many people each individual horse touches, whether it's someone like Vicky Van Camp at Darley who sneaks Midshipman apple slices or Price Bell at Mill Ridge who shared how much a winner inspired a tour guest from his childhood cancer hospital bed or Larry McGinnis at WinStar whose affection for Tiznow is palpable or Veronica Reed at Three Chimneys who so eloquently said Gun Runner “reminds us that this industry is about the horse.”

What became clear throughout this project is it's not just the public faces associated with these horses when they win the Breeders' Cup who are impacted. It's all the people ever associated with a Breeders' Cup winner, from the foaling person who helps pull them out of their dam to the exercise rider on the racetrack to the grooms and handlers and watchmen and administrative staff who care for them today and even their fans.

Breeders' Cup: Celebrating 40 Years of the Breeders' Cup from Thoroughbred Daily News on Vimeo.

Often we have fixed images in our minds of these horses during their racing days, when they're at peak fitness, in racing shape, and young and fiery. But as the years pass, the stallions fill out, the broodmares get permanent bellies, the grays become white, and quiet time on the farm often mellows even the fiercest of competitors. Knowing nothing but a lifetime of top care, these horses positively glow with good health, the assurance of having every need met, and the confidence they are champions.

What struck us as we saw each horse and spoke with their connections is the love and adoration each one has inspired. It is often said that 'a rising tide lifts all boats.' That's what these Breeders' Cup-winning horses are, an unstoppable swell that elevates everyone around them. This 40 years and 40 days of Breeders' Cup winners project may have started as a way to celebrate Breeders' Cup horses, but it's also about how the lives of all the people connected with a Breeders' Cup winner are impacted by these remarkable horses. We've seen that in the memories connections have shared with us that we've published alongside their photos and we can see that in the pride their handlers take when presenting them for photos.

We're thrilled we were able to showcase more than 40 former Breeders' Cup winners in the TDN in the 40 days leading up to this year's event. It was through the lens of photographer Sarah Andrew that we all got the privilege of seeing this tremendous collection of Breeders' Cup winners as they appear today. We hope you've enjoyed seeing them as much as we've enjoyed sharing them.

More Breeders' Cup winners will be added to racing's annals this year. In the meantime, as we appreciate these magnificent athletes, may they also remind us of the hard-working people behind them and how lucky we all are to love these horses and this sport.

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“What stands out to me with Accelerate was the year he had that culminated in the Breeders' Cup Classic,” said Sadler. “He won, what, four or five Grade Is that year. So, he had just a fabulous year and he went to Churchill Downs as the favorite and he ran his race. It was just the thrill of one of the biggest days of my career. My first Breeders' Cup win. They hashed me over the coals because I hadn't, until then, hit the big one. It was a great day.”

Accelerate (2013 chestnut horse, Lookin At Lucky–Issues, by Awesome Again)

Lifetime record: Ch. older male, MGISW, 23-10-5-6, $6,692,480

Breeders' Cup connections: B-Mike Abraham (KY); O-Hronis Racing LLC; T-John Sadler; J-Joel Rosario.

Current location: Lane's End Farm, Versailles, Ky.

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BEHOLDER MILE S.-GI, $501,500, Santa Anita, 3-11, 4yo/up, f/m, 1m.
A MO REAY, 122, f, 4, Uncle Mo-Margaret Reay, by Pioneerof the Nile). Lifetime Record: 12-5-1-3, $692,650. O-Hunter Valley Farm; B-T & G Farm of Kentucky LLC (KY); T-Brad H. Cox.
Not only is A Mo Reay a clever blend of two parts of a name (sire Uncle Mo and dam Margaret Reay), it also has assonance with the word Amore, so it is wordplay–pun or calembour–resonating name combination (with possibly a little touch of an indefinite article in front of it). Literary-award level brilliance, for me. And we are talking about a Grade I winner, so the Gods like the name.

7th-Oaklawn, Msw, 3-17, 3yo, f, 1 1/16m.
EXPONENTIAL STAR (f, 3, Accelerate–Star Number, by Polish Numbers). O-Ten Strike Racing; B-A. Leonard Pineau (MD); T-Lindsay Schultz.
One can find many different definitions of “exponential” online (many heavy on mathematics…), but I like this one of the many from Google: (of an increase) becoming more and more rapid. Therefore, the name of the Oaklawn 3-17 female winner Exponential Star is spot on. Actually, in that race she came from behind and was “clear at the wire”, so she fully deserves the name.

3rd-Chukyo, 1-15, Newcomers, 3yo, 1800m.
KISS ON THE CHEEK (JPN) (f, 3, Curlin–Eskimo Kisses {GISW, $711,102}, by To Honor and Serve). O-Shadai Race Horse Co Ltd; B-Shadai Farm (Jpn); T-Mikio Matsunaga.
Maybe rubbing noses to signify affection is just a cute necessity for Eskimos, in reason of the freezing weather. In any case, a U.S.-conceived but Japan-based winning 3-year-old filly out of the famous and excellent Kenny McPeek-trained Grade I-winning mare Eskimo Kisses has graduated to the more temperate name of Kiss on the Cheek. You gotta be looking forward to more progeny out of the dam: love will save the day, as the popular song goes.

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If the stampede to unproven sires is ludicrous, then so is the haste with which they are abandoned. Stallions whose stock should plainly be granted time to mature round a second turn are often prematurely judged. Even more precocious types often find themselves long since abandoned by the most ruthless commercial breeders, who can annually move on to a fresh group whose reputation is usefully invulnerable to any appraisal more meaningful than hype.

For most stallions, then, this is a time when sales averages are coming down, along with fees and books. It's very rare that a young sire emerges from his opening racetrack skirmishes with the authority of Gun Runner, whose first sophomores spectacularly consolidated their record-breaking domination of the freshmen preceding the group we consider today. You more often find yourself dealing with an Overanalyze, champion freshman five years ago and meanwhile discarded to South Korea.

To be fair, however, this lot have laid down a very purposeful marker as the freshmen of 2022. The top six, indeed, can also be found among the top 10 of the overall list of juvenile sires. Auspiciously, moreover, there are grounds for thinking that several, judged on the template of their own performance and pedigree, can stimulate further progress from their maturing stock.

Arguably, the best long-term value right now rests with those who might emulate the way the tragic Arrogate transformed his legacy with his first sophomores, after they had made a quiet start as juveniles. On the other hand, those sires that had assembled monster books as commercial rookies should expect to be judged pretty sternly, pretty quickly.

So we have to strike a balance. Already second crop yearlings have typically registered a depreciation of many sire brands in the sales ring. On the other hand, investors of sufficient patience, vision and bravery may decide that this is precisely the moment to roll the dice on a slower burn.

Bubbling Under:

BOLT D'ORO closed out the year strongest to secure the freshman laurels after a sustained battle with two other very promising young sires, a distinction that formalized the superiority he showed both in the sheer breadth of his quality–a stellar one-in-five starters getting black type–and notably in the sales performance of his second crop, which uniquely among the trio managed to advance the values achieved by his first.

His median, always the key measure, rose to $152,500 from the $110,000 achieved by those debut yearlings who had meanwhile been showing that it was money well spent. That's an exceptional vote of confidence, albeit perhaps partly also reflected a rather narrower choice for purchasers after numbers had to be controlled (along with his boisterous behavior, at the time) for his second season. Bolt d'Oro was back up to 174 mares for his fourth book last spring, and the quality of his mares will only be going up with his fee-now $35,000 after slipping to $15,000 in 2021. Obviously he has to work harder to achieve the same ratios now, with the stakes raised, but he has made an exemplary start.

Fairly steady stuff on the track from MO TOWN (illuminated by Myrtlewood S. romper Key Of Life) does not tell half his story, as he is an unusual example of a stallion whose business soared in his third and fourth seasons. His second crop of yearlings emerge from a book of 104 mares, but he then covered 204 in 2021 and 218 this spring. If that generates renewed momentum on the track, in a couple of years from now, this could turn out to be a smart time to get involved at just $5,000.

Army Mule | Sarah K. Andrew

BRONZE: ARMY MULE (Friesan Fire-Crafty Toast by Crafty Prospector)
$12,500 Hill 'n' Dale
This has always looked a stallion who could only have extreme outcomes. He was either going to be a dud, or prove himself exceptional value. Happily, there already seems little doubt that the switch is “on” and Army Mule appears set to build something pretty imposing on the fragile foundations of a track career that showcased freakish ability across barely four minutes, and a somewhat left-field pedigree.

His every trajectory is upward. Most importantly, his first juveniles have excelled, elevating him to fourth in the table from a smaller book (and much smaller fee) than those above him. Of his 24 winners from 61 starters, as many as five won at black-type level-the top three were tied with just one more-in tipping $2 million in purse money.

This performance had been anticipated by a stunning debut at the yearling sales, when Army Mule's first crop averaged nine times their $10,000 conception fee. In response, there was a further rebound in the size of his 2022 book, after he had slumped from 140 mares to 47 in his second season. He has now received 83 and 115 partners in the two years since. And while he couldn't quite replicate his initial yield with his second crop of yearlings, he again punched way above the kind of ratio you might expect at this stage, averaging $69,272 for 22 yearlings sold (from only 25 offered). Unsurprisingly, given his own giddy history as a yearling pinhook ($35,000 to $825,000) he also achieved dividends as high as $450,000 at the 2-year-old sales.

Originally, no doubt, breeders may have been torn between his six-length GI Carter H. success, in 1:20.94, on what proved to be the final of just three starts; and, on the other hand, some fairly unfashionable genes (albeit second and third dams both graded stakes winners). One way or another, however, things are plainly functioning in a repeatable fashion. You know what they say when it walks like a duck…

If Army Mule already sires runners like a good stallion, and sells horses like a good stallion, the chances are that he's a good stallion.

Accelerate | Lane's End

SILVER: ACCELERATE (Lookin At Lucky-Issues by Awesome Again)
$10,000 Lane's End
Of the three stallions launched into this intake at Lane's End, CITY OF LIGHT was always the golden boy. Though slow to get going, his 11 winners since midsummer already feature three at stakes level. Nobody, in short, still needs telling what he can still hope to achieve at $60,000.

At the sales, however, it has meanwhile proved much tougher going for the second crop of yearlings by the pair who started alongside him. Nonetheless I am unhesitatingly keeping the faith with the one I have liked all along.

In this series we've already nailed our colors to the Lookin At Lucky mast with Country House, believing the Ashford stalwart as likely to be underestimated as a potential sire of sires as he has always been in his own right. And there's no doubt in my mind that Accelerate is an absolutely astounding amount of horse for just $10,000.

Did anyone for a moment think that Accelerate was going to start off with a cavalcade of sprint maidens at the Keeneland spring meet? Yet having looked after his supporters very nicely with his first yearlings, he found himself childishly neglected with his second crop.

Accelerate did muster 14 juvenile winners, including one at stakes level, which is as much as could have been sensibly expected for a horse that himself required four sophomore starts to break his maiden in high summer. He then rolled on to win a stakes and the GII Los Alamitos Derby before finishing third in the GI Dirt Mile at the Breeders' Cup. Lest we forget, runner-up in that race was another sophomore who was only laying down foundations: horse name of Gun Runner (Candy Ride {Arg}).

Nobody should need reminding of the heights Accelerate achieved in his own maturity, winning five Grade Is at five. His only defeat that year? By a neck to none other than City Of Light, giving weight, the pair 10 lengths clear.

Accelerate laid down a perfect marker with his first sophomore runner, on New Year's Day at Laurel, where a filly making her fourth start broke her maiden easily over a bare six furlongs. That's a similar template to Winters Lion, who had run fifth, third and second in Churchill maidens before putting it all together to romp by 6 1/2 at Oaklawn in December. Anyone can see that all this is pure groundwork and breeders blessed with that rarest of commodities, patience, will recognize the value they're getting if their primary objective is to put a winner under their mare. (Which should, after all, be just about the most commercial thing anyone can do…)

Remember that Accelerate is out of an Awesome Again mare (representing the distaff gold of Deputy Minister) who also produced siblings, respectively, placed at Grade I and Grade III level, her own dam being a half-sister to a Grade I winner. (And the line traces to a fifth dam, Smartaire, whose son Smarten gave us the dam of Accelerate's grandsire Smart Strike.)

It's a dismal measure of the world we live in that Accelerate was retired at a fee as accessible as $20,000, lower than several horses he had left gasping in his wake-and that he has since taken three cuts in three years. What exactly are people after? This horse earned $6.7 million by dint of class, constitution and a physique prized at $380,000 as a yearling, despite his ostensibly uncommercial paternity. Bar a historic Triple Crown winner, Accelerate would have been a lock for Horse of the Year and I remain confident that he will, gradually and cumulatively, retrieve respect in his second career.

He actually has a very solid numerical base, with as many as 380 mares across his first three books. Given that his opening crops seem very likely to keep thriving with time, he could wind up with plenty of headlines overlapping in the coming years. As such, this feels like a very good moment to get ahead of the game with Accelerate. Sure, that suggestion might irritate those who suffered from the myopic treatment of his second crop at the sales. But someday people may look back at this horse, at this fee, as one of the great missed opportunities.

Oscar Performance | Sarah K. Andrew

GOLD: OSCAR PERFORMANCE (Kitten's Joy-Devine Actress by Theatrical {Ire})
$20,000 Mill Ridge
This guy will cost you a little more this time round-and so he jolly well should.

Most obviously, Oscar Performance has made an exemplary start on the track, with higher earnings per starter than any other top-10 freshman sire. From star managed to put him as high as eighth in the prize money table (slipstreaming Mendelssohn, with 90!) and featured not just 17 winners, a couple at black-type level, but also four placed in graded stakes company. These included a Grade II one-two when Andthewinneris beat Deer District at Keeneland in the fall.

We know, moreover, that these horses will keep building if they adhere to their sire's own template as a Grade I winner at two, three and four. And, crucially, even a commercial market so petrified of turf horses has managed to register his promise: bucking the usual trend, his second crop elevated their predecessors' yearling average from $43,149 to $57,474 (for a strong 38 sold of 44 offered).

But the real key for Oscar Performance is that he has emerged at an hour of need for the enlightened minority who actually want to connect the American bloodstock industry to huge racetrack opportunity on American grass.

Everyone knows how the turf program is expanding, and that a virtuous circle is underway between fully subscribed fields and purse money. And a lot of people, as a result, are investing heavily in elite European blood at sales over the water. On their own doorstep, however, they have now allowed both English Channel and Kitten's Joy to pass without ever having shown them anything like enough respect in the ring.

Now we have a blatant young talent emerging to blatant opportunity. There is generational room at the top, after the consecutive loss of his own sire, English Channel and Get Stormy. And here's a horse who had the brilliance to drop back from elite scores at 10 furlongs (Arlington Million/Belmont Derby) to make all in a Grade I mile; the soundness to bank $2.35 million across three seasons; and a pedigree that duplicates the same breed-changing alchemy top and bottom.

That's because his damsire is a son of Nureyev, who was by Northern Dancer out of the great Special (Forli {Arg}); while he extends the storied sire-line of Sadler's Wells, who was of course by Northern Dancer out of Special's daughter Fairy Bridge (Bold Reason). That may sound like way too much chlorophyll for a lot of Kentucky breeders, but I will never cease complaining about prescriptive, self-fulfilling assumptions about different bloodlines and different surfaces. Sure enough, Oscar Performance has already come up with Red Carpet Ready to win a dirt sprint by 10 lengths at Churchill on debut and then a 6.5f dirt stakes over the same track on her only other start.

Oscar Performance has been launched with unsurprising flair by a farm that once stood international influences in Diesis and Gone West. It's great to see them back in the stallion game, not least with so much “industrial” traffic cornered by the same few farms, and it's a typically thoughtful gesture-having trimmed him to $12,500 pending his first runners-to confine the increase in Oscar Performance's fee to $17,500 for those clients who had used him already.

The rest of us may have been less alert, but anyone can now see that Oscar Performance is on his way. He will surely rank high on the shortlists of European pinhookers as well. Roll out the red carpet!

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The first stakes winner for his freshman sire (by Lookin At Lucky), Hal is his dam's only surviving offspring. Purely a Dream lost a foal last year by Game Winner and was bred to Essential Quality for next season. Click for the Equibase.com chart or VIDEO, sponsored by TVG.

DISPLAY S., C$130,750, Woodbine, 11-5, 2yo, 7f (AWT), 1:22.00, ft.
1–HAL, 120, g, 2, by Accelerate
                1st Dam: Purely a Dream (GSW, $138,769), by Pure Prize
                2nd Dam: Yorksters Girl (Ire), by Bachelor Duke
                3rd Dam: Isadora Duncan (Ire), by Sadler's Wells
1ST BLACK TYPE WIN. O-Suzi Shoemaker & First Corp.
Thoroughbreds; B-Lantern Hill Farm LLC & FirstCorp
Thoroughbreds LLC (KY); T-Darwin D. Banach; J-Justin Stein.
C$75,000. Lifetime Record: 2-2-0-0, $86,864.
2–Ticker Tape Home, 118, f, 2, Medaglia d'Oro–Journey Home,
by War Front. ($625,000 Ylg '21 FTSAUG). 1ST BLACK TYPE.
O-Live Oak Plantation; B-Sam-Son Farm (ON); T-Mark E. Casse.
C$30,000.
3–Firing Bullets, 119, f, 2, Firing Line–Twisted Beauty, by
General Quarters. ($19,000 Ylg '21 FTKOCT; $210,000 2yo '22
OBSAPR). O-Gary Barber; B-Texas Star Farm (KY); T-Mark E.
Casse. C$13,750.
Margins: HF, 4 3/4, 3. Odds: 2.45, 1.65, 5.80.
Also Ran: Chiseler, Keen Flatter, Hank Ollie. Scratched: Alpha Meister, Forever Dixie.

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The assistant trainer to John Sadler and former Breeders' Cup winning-jockey is the regular morning partner of unbeaten sensation and 3-5 Classic morning-line favorite Flightline (Tapit). The highest-rated racehorse in the world has won his first five starts by an astounding combined margin of 62 3/4 lengths, led by a jaw-dropping 19 1/4-length win while making his two-turn debut in the GI Pacific Classic at Del Mar.

Getting the monster that is Flightline to harness some of that brilliant early speed, however, has been another story.

“With him, it's always like, 'How do you ride a hurricane?'” Sadler said in these pages ahead of Flightline's spectacular GI Met Mile win at Belmont Park in June. “Juan's been working with him and getting him to relax.”

Well, how exactly does Leyva do it?

“In the beginning, he was always very keen to do more than what was wanted from him,” Leyva said. “It's just been a work in progress with him every day trying to get him to settle down. If it were up to him, he'd go out there and just breeze every day.”

Longtime Sadler client and Flightline co-owner Kosta Hronis echoes those same sentiments.

“He wanted to go full blast and run as hard as he could all of the time,” said Hronis, who campaigns Flightline along with Siena Farm, breeder Summer Wind Equine, West Point Thoroughbreds and Woodford Racing.

“I was watching the Pacific Classic replay on TVG and they were showing a Flightline work earlier in the year where he's just dragging Juan around the racetrack. Juan looks like he has both feet on the brakes. But then you see his last workout before the Pacific Classic and he's turned Flightline into such a relaxed and professional horse to where he's push-button now. It's a blessing that Juan is getting some recognition for what he's done. Not only for Flightline, but for the barn in general. He's done a great job.”

With a $1-million pricetag as a Fasig-Tipton Saratoga yearling and a growing reputation that he could back it up coming off the farm–albeit a bit belatedly after suffering a nasty wound to his hind end as a youngster–the expectations were always sky high for Flightline upon joining the Sadler barn in December of his 2-year-old season.

“The first day that I sat on him, I thought, 'Wow, what an amazing animal,'” Leyva said. “Just the way he moves is so different from other horses. And I've been at this for quite a while now, so I draw from experience of being on some good horses in the past. And he was just something that I had never experienced.”

Born in Mexico and raised in Riverside, California, Leyva, like so many, was introduced to the sport by his father. The 38-year-old didn't immediately envision racing as a potential career path though.

“I liked horses and I liked riding them, but I didn't think that I would be doing what I'm doing now,” Leyva said. “When I was very young, my dad had some Quarter Horses and he would match race them. In those kind of races, you put up your own money. He didn't really trust the jockeys, so he told me, 'You're gonna be the jockey.'”

He continued, “I did it to please him, but when I won my first match race, it was just such an exhilarating feeling of joy and triumph that the bug just bit me. Once I got old enough, I quit school and focused all my energy on the horses.”

Still just in his late teenage years, Leyva began making the rounds on the backstretch at Santa Anita and was eager to show off his handywork from riding in the match races for his old man.

“My agent takes me to John's barn to work a horse,” Leyva said. “And me being a young kid, I wanted to show John that I could switch sticks–hit right, hit left. So, that's exactly what I did.”

As you can imagine, this did not go over well with the boss.

“I come back and John says, 'What the heck were you doing! We don't hit our horses in the mornings!' Leyva said. “And at that point, I thought I blew my chance at Santa Anita.”

He didn't. Sadler gave Leyva another chance the following morning–he kept the stick in his back pocket this time, thankfully–and a friendship was beginning to take shape. Leyva launched his career as a jockey in 2000, and, before relocating to South Florida, Sadler offered him a job to work as an assistant. He declined. At least for the time being.

“I wanted to ride races, I wanted to pursue my dream,” Leyva said. “I left, but through it all, we always stayed in contact. He always checked up on me.”

Leyva celebrated his biggest victory aboard 20-1 Musical Romance–ironically over the Sadler-trained Switch–in the 2011 GI Breeders' Cup Filly & Mare Sprint at Churchill Downs. He previously experienced the thrill of riding on the first Saturday in May in Louisville, piloting Storm in May to an unplaced finish in the 2007 GI Kentucky Derby. “I thought I had reached the top with Musical Romance, but I don't think I had even seen it until now with this horse [Flightline],” Leyva said.

Sadler once again “checked up” on Leyva a year or two following his victory at the Championships. He wasn't ready to hang up the reins just yet though.

“At the time, I still had some business and I was doing OK,” Leyva said. “I told him that I didn't want to quit riding yet. I was still enjoying it.”

Battling weight issues and suffering from a decline in business following the retirement of Musical Romance and Storm in May's trainer Bill Kaplan, Leyva decided to call it quits in 2017. In all, Leyva won 803 races for a total of $22,942,868 in earnings. Trainer David Fawkes was the first to offer him a job as an assistant in South Florida, but Leyva had other ideas.

“After talking it over with my wife, I called John and said, 'I'm ready to come home,'” Leyva said.

Immediately thrown into the deep end, Leyva was put in charge of Sadler's 20-horse string at Los Alamitos. Not exactly what he had in mind when agreeing to return to the West Coast to serve as his assistant.

“I basically got a crash course in being a trainer,” Leyva said. “I went from riding races the past week to having 20 horses and trying to manage a set list, riders and grooms, etc. Little by little, I started doing my thing. But I didn't come to California to be at Los Al. I came to California to learn how to train horses from John.”

Fast forward six months and school was officially in session at the 'Great Race Place.'

“When he brought me to Santa Anita, it was like going from elementary school to high school–now you're in with the big dogs,” Leyva said with a laugh.

Leyva rode champion Accelerate (Lookin At Lucky) ahead of his win in the 2018 GI Breeders' Cup Classic, which emphatically put an end to Sadler's well-documented 0-for-44 winless mark at the Championships. Leyva also began working with Sadler-trained standouts such as Hronis Racing's MGSW Catalina Cruiser (Union Rags) and Woodford Racing's MGSW and GI Breeders' Cup Mile runner-up Catapult (Kitten's Joy).

“I was very lucky that from the beginning when I went to Santa Anita, John had a lot of nice horses,” Leyva said. “I was able to work alongside them and really recognize what it takes to get to those kind of big races.

“Once I got to Santa Anita, that's where I really started soaking everything in that John was doing. And the great thing about John is that when we're doing something with the horses, he always takes time to explain to me why we're doing things. He's a very good teacher.”

As Flightline puts his unblemished record on the line in Saturday's $6-million centerpiece at Keeneland, Hronis summed it up best.

“Juan's been a great student of John's,” Hronis said. “And Flightline has been a great student of Juan's.”

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The stall, of course, belonged to Accelerate (Lookin At Lucky), a sleek, shiny copper penny of a colt, who carried weighty expectations that this was the year his trainer, John Sadler, would finally shrug off the voodoo that had cursed his previous attempts at the coveted prize.

It was also viewed as a new high altitude for a horse whose climb to the summit of the sport had been distinguished not by a dizzying free-climb to the top, but by careful, steady progress. Each foothold earned and true. A trail of sweat left behind at each contour.

The team wasn't without worries. The horse's regular rider, Victor Espinoza–widely seen as something of a key to Accelerate's latent talent–had that July taken a crunching fall aboard the Peter Miller trained Bobby Abu Dhabi, whose sudden death during training left Espinoza with a broken C3 vertebrae in his neck and fears, miraculously temporary, of paralysis.

In the end, Espinoza's replacement, Joel Rosario, has probably ridden no easier winner before or since, quickly putting what looked like the length of a football pitch between him and his dumbstruck rivals with a stunning kick around the home turn.

Four years on, and the hunt for this year's heavy favorite on the eve of the Del Mar showpiece once again leads to Barn J.

“Right now I'm excited, but I'm not overly excited,” said Sadler, Wednesday morning in his office, of Flightline (Tapit), whose stall-padded floor to ceiling as though housing a madman, faces the office door.

To be fair to Flightline, we're not talking Hannibal Lecter. “He's very content here,” Sadler said. “Loves Del Mar. He's just a nice horse to be around. But you know, he has his quirks. He can be a little aggressive in the stall.”

As for Sadler's declaration of studied equilibrium, it provides a measured counter-point to the celebrity fandom that follows each rare race-day sighting of the horse.

“We've got a couple more days,” Sadler added. “When you get in race week and everything's gone well, you just want to maintain that. That's really the message coming out of here this week. He doesn't have to run any faster. He's just got to run the same as he's been running.”

Words to strike fear into the heart of this weekend's competitors, all of whom will have witnessed Flightline's clinical evisceration of the 21 hapless victims strewn in his wake between races one to four.

If indeed Flightline turns up on Saturday and runs the same as he's been running, the race will prove a fascinating bookend to Sadler's own trajectory these past few years, catapulting a stellar record into even higher orbits.

Accelerate, of course, subsequently secured Sadler his first Breeders' Cup victory, in the GI Classic and a Horse of the Year garland would surely have followed were it not for a Triple Crown that went the way of Justify (Scat Daddy).

Hitherto winless in the Pacific Classic prior to Accelerate, the trainer has since secured another two victories in the race, courtesy of Higher Power (Medaglia d'Oro) in 2019 and Tripoli (Kitten's Joy) last year.

The GI Santa Anita “Big Cap” H. was another West Coast landmark oddly absent from Sadler's travel card until Accelerate righted that wrong. Stablemates Gift Box (Twirling Candy) and Combatant (Scat Daddy) followed up over the next two years. The likes of Catalina Cruiser (Union Rags), Rock Your World (Candy Ride), Cistron (The Factor) and Flagstaff (Speightstown) each have played a part in keeping the heat turned on full.

Then came Flightline, a stratospheric talent from whatever plain you're on. A big long-striding and magnificent comet, blink and you'll miss him bright. The numbers have been crunched, cogitated and digested. Four races, four wins. Average distance of victory is 10.9 lengths. Beyers from a Death Valley summer of 105, 114, 118, and 112.

“Is this the best horse I've ever trained? I say, yes. I don't hesitate,” Sadler said. “I've never trained a horse like this in my 30, 40-odd year career. But I don't compare him to other great horses. That's for the sports writers and the handicappers and Timeform.”

Which piqued this writer's curiosity. What kinds of stresses come with the responsibility of a horse who draws inevitable comparisons to the likes of Frankel (GB) (Galileo {Ire})? What new instruments has he brought to the trainer's toolbox? Would he have had the skills to harness Flightline's talents if the horse had landed in his barn, say, 20 years prior?

“The horse is teaching me all the time,” Sadler said, before extolling the virtues of patience.

The horse's coterie of owners–Hronis Racing, Summer Wind Equine, West Point Thoroughbreds, Siena Farm, and Woodford Racing–all receive a gold star.

Despite their multitude, “the owners always allow me to do as I see fit,” he said. “It's all worked so far. So far so good.”

Pressed further, the trainer threw up his hands–the wrong week to wheel out the therapist's couch.

“You're asking me to be super reflective and conceptualize a lot of that stuff, but right now I don't allow myself to do that. I just do my job right now,” Sadler said. “Might be a better interview next week.”

Fair enough stick with the tangibles, like Flightline's last race, the GI Hill 'n' Dale Met Mile on GI Belmont S. day, when a sticky break propelled the horse into stop-start opening furlongs.

Given Flightline's lack of match practice, could the events of the Met Mile have been a blessing in disguise?

“People say that, which is fine. It probably was. But I sure like to break clean. I don't like to put any, you know,” Sadler said, pausing either for effect or the right words, “obstacles in the way.” This explains Flightline's homework assignments at Del Mar this summer, which included a five-furlong bullet from the gate at the end of July.

Then comes another tangible–the as yet unchartered distance of the Pacific Classic. “It's a big ask, you know, to go from a mile to a mile and a quarter,” Sadler said.

Though the stamina of lesser horses can be stretched out, explained the trainer, “when I talk about really good mile-and-a-quarter horses, first of all, they have to have the innate ability to run that far.”

With Flightline, “I've just got to hold him where he is,” he added. “On breeze days, you'll note that his gallops out are very good.”

Much has been made of the team's efforts at reining in Flightline's innate exuberance–a balancing act perhaps too easily under-appreciated.

Stifling too much of a horse's natural quirk and athleticism of a morning can sour them as fast as cream left out in the sun. Let the throttle out too far too often, just watch as the wheels fall off.

Juan Leyva, Sadler's assistant, has done a “beautiful job with him” of a morning, says the trainer, calling it a case of “two minds meeting.”

“He's getting more relaxed, you know,” Sadler added, of Flightline. “He is maturing. He's showing he can carry himself in a more relaxed manner. That's what we're seeing, which is a normal progression.”

As for Saturday, “I see a small field, but a very good field. I know these horses intimately and they're very good,” said Sadler. “We have a lot of respect for every horse in there.”

The Bob Baffert-trained Country Grammer (Tonalist), this year's G1 Dubai World Cup winner given a timely pipe-opener in the GII San Diego H. early in the meet, receives plaudits for his prior top-flight victories over the trip.

Sadler has watched the John Shirreffs-trained Express Train (Union Rags) “throughout his career,” he said. “He's a very nice horse.”

As for Ed Moger's Stilleto Boy (Shackleford), vanquished in Flightline's GI Malibu S. last December, “I like him a lot,” said Sadler.

But talk switches back to the horse mere feet away, saved from himself by padded walls and kept from the public's gaze by a series of well-documented issues and events. Sadler has kept the door open to a 5-year-old campaign. How serious are those overtures?

“We'll get into Saturday and then see how it goes.”

Now, about that interview next week…

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4th-SAR, $88k, Msw, (S), 2yo, 7f, 2:47 p.m. ET

The New York-bred program will be celebrated Friday at Saratoga with an all state-bred card featuring six stakes, and a live-looking maiden race in the fourth headlined by Hoolie Racing Stable's firster CHULLIGAN (Justify) should not be overlooked. The chestnut, who sold for $825,000 last summer at Fasig-Tipton Saratoga, is the second foal to race out of three-time New York-bred stakes winner and 2017 GI Breeders' Cup Filly & Mare Sprint upsetter Bar of Gold (Medaglia d'Oro), following GSW turfer Coinage (Tapit). The Christophe Clement trainee shows a sharp-looking worktab over this track, most recently going a half-mile in :47 4/5 (8/40) from the gate Aug. 19. Quick to Accuse (Accelerate) also opens his account in here for owner Rupp Racing and trainer Horacio De Paz. The bay is a half to millionaire New York-bred stalwart and 11-time stakes winner Mr. Buff (Friend Or Foe) and sold for $200,000 at OBS March after breezing a furlong in :10 1/5. TJCIS PPs

—@JBiancaTDN

The post Aug. 26 Insights: $825k Justify Colt Debuts On NYB Showcase Day appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

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