Nearly two decades apart, we’ve witnessed a Breeders’ Cup in the aftermath of a devastating terrorism attack, which led to armed marksmen defending the rooftop of the host track, and now during a global pandemic, which necessitated the barring of the general public from the two-day event and kept the relatively few essential attendees masked and socially distanced from one another.
Unlike 2001, this year’s championships produced no singular “Tiznow wins it for America!” moment to buoy the spirit of a nation in crisis. But the crescendo of Authentic (Into Mischief)’s GI Classic win was dramatically satisfying in its own right, and the subplots of the supporting races unfolded with enough twists of interest to spur decent day-after debate while providing more than a few intriguing horses to look forward to in 2021.
Not everything went perfectly–we’ll get to that momentarily. But with COVID-19 adversely tilting the balance of everyday life right now, the industry can breathe a collective sigh of relief that the Triple Crown races and the Breeders’ Cup are safely in the books and not too badly banged up considering the outsized doses of disruption and havoc that 2020 imposed upon our economy and the sporting landscape.
Yes, big-event betting handles have been down, overnight purses nationwide have taken hits, and the auctions are in flux. But things could be far worse for Thoroughbred racing considering everything that’s happened over the past 10 months. Viewed through the prism of realistic expectations, this year’s Breeders’ Cup rates a thumbs up based on perseverance and competitiveness alone.
You can take your pick among the dueling storylines percolating to the surface in the aftermath of this year’s event. The pandemic itself even provided a few in microcosm: Three of the Grade I races (Turf, Mile, Filly and Mare Turf) were won by jockeys picking up those mounts only because the first-call riders tested positive for COVID-19.
But the “old-fashioned American dirt horse dominance” theme has to rank near the top of Breeders’ Cup topics that will resonate. The trend is notable because it’s part of an intentional shifting of the arc.
When Keeneland switched from a main synthetic surface back to a traditional dirt track in 2014 after an eight-year experiment with Polytrack, one of its stated intentions was to “be more competitive in attracting the top horses and Triple Crown and Breeders’ Cup contenders and in hosting major racing events.”
It’s now six years into that dirt rebirth and Keeneland has hosted two Breeders’ Cups. The first, in 2015, was capped by Triple Crown winner American Pharoah engineering an unprecedented “Grand Slam” by trouncing the field at every call in the Classic. On Saturday, we saw Authentic, this year’s wire-to-wire GI Kentucky Derby winner, step up against older foes and unleash yet another front-running tour de force that catapulted him 2 1/4 lengths clear of a deep field of Classic contenders.
Those speed-centric accomplishments are already (in American Pharoah’s case) and will eventually be (for Authentic) having an impact on the bloodstock marketplace, underscoring how one major racing venue (and sales company)’s decision to switch surfaces can produce wider downstream effects in a relatively short period of time.
“The American dirt horse is tough, strong, and fast,” colleague Sid Fernando wrote in a 2019 TDN column. “He’s an athlete. He’s a combination of speed and stamina, bred to race on an unforgivingly hard surface, bred to race at two, bred to break quickly from the gate, bred to run hard early, bred to withstand pressure late.”
That pretty much sums up Authentic in 2020, doesn’t it? Or, for that matter, the Breeders’ Cup performances of Knicks Go (Paynter), the newly explosive wire-to-wire winner of the GI Dirt Mile, and pedal-to-the-metal phenom Gamine (Into Mischief), who conceded the early lead but stalked menacingly before pouncing in the stretch of her 6 1/4-length romp in the GI Filly and Mare Sprint. All three winners were credited with track-record times, providing future fodder to bolster the sales catalogue pages of their offspring.
Records made to be broken?
We’ve all heard the old saying that records are made to be broken. But the two-day Breeders’ Cup meet at Keeneland took that concept to the extreme. Counting the undercard races, dirt-track records were smashed at 6, 6 1/2, 7, 8 and 10 furlongs. Had Monomoy Girl (Tapizar) run just a tenth of a second faster in winning the GI Distaff, she would have eclipsed the 9-furlong mark. For good measure, the rarely contested 1 3/16 miles turf record also fell.
Keeneland’s main-track records have to be taken with a figurative grain of salt (or grain of dirt in this case). The track has not only changed in composition several times, but its configuration has been altered since 2006, making comparisons to previous dirt-era records impossible. The current dirt records pertain only to races from the autumn of 2014 onward, and the first Breeders’ Cup at Keeneland also established five then-records, largely because so few dirt races were available for comparison at that time.
Complicating matters additionally on Saturday, Keeneland’s teletimer was inadvertently tripped prior to the start of the Classic. So Authentic’s track-record time of 1:59.19 for 1 1/4 miles in a $6-million championship race had to be determined by timing it off a video replay, which is neither ideal nor the industry standard. As of this writing, no fractional splits have been added to the official Equibase chart.
So what about the other cliché we’ve all heard, that time only matters when you’re in jail? Maybe it’s more important to assess how the Breeders’ Cup winners ran rather than how fast.
The B-word (bias) is never far from discussion on big race days or championship weekends, although it’s evolved considerably since the era when dirt tracks were widely believed to be souped up (and in some cases actually were) for major events.
The raw numbers tell us that Keeneland carded 14 main-track races over Friday and Saturday. Five of them were won wire-to-wire. Five were won by forwardly placed horses not too far off the lead. Four were won by off-the-pace closers.
By that calculation, speed-centric horses accounted for 10 of 14 wins. But six of those winners were favored, and most likely would have been well-backed regardless of how the track was perceived to be playing. Perhaps more impactful is the argument that ties into the point above about the defining quality of American dirt racers in general: If speed is more or less the “universal bias” on this continent, no one should be surprised when races slant that way.
If you drill down further and cull from those Keeneland results two “outlier” races that were won by closers–the marathon 1 5/8 miles race on Friday that started from a backstretch chute and the second race on Saturday whose complexion was marred by a spill at the front of the pack turning for home–that leaves only two horses over the weekend who legitimately closed into the teeth of the prevailing trend: Essential Quality (Tapit) rallied from well back to win the GI Juvenile (aided by the fastest opening half-mile split in that race since 2003), and fan favorite Whitmore (Pleasantly Perfect), who upset the GI Sprint under a deft rail-skimming ride after being buried in the back for most of his trip.
Lasix: Don’t let the door hit you on the way out
There is one other over-arching aspect of the 2020 Breeders’ Cup that is worth mentioning: This was the first year of the planned phasing-out of Lasix for the World Championships. Earlier this year, most major American racing jurisdictions prohibited the 2-year-old use of the controversial anti-bleeding medication on race day, and all five of the races for juveniles on Friday were mandated Lasix-free.
Those 2-year-old fields were robust, diversely matched, and for the most part formful. It was also heartening to hear a respected trainer like Ken McPeek say earlier in the week that not having one of his Juvenile entrants on Lasix was a reason he felt confident about running the young colt back with only 12 days between starts.
But Saturday was a different story because the older Breeders’ Cup horses were allowed Lasix. After getting blanked on Friday, European-based trainees swept all four of the second-day grass championships–and every single one was captured by a first-time-Lasix (FTL) user.
Glass Slippers (GB) (Dream Ahead), the only FTL entrant in the GI Turf Sprint, won by a half-length at 10-1.
Audarya (Fr) (Wootton Bassett {GB}), the FTL course-record victress in the Filly and Mare Turf, won by a neck at 17-1.
The GI Mile trifecta (73-1, 11-1,18-1) was keyed by FTL Order of Australia (Ire) (Australia {GB}), with the other two placings rounded out by another European going back on Lasix for only the second time in his life and yet another FTL entrant.
The GI Turf exacta was comprised of the FTL filly Tarnawa (Ire) (Shamardal) besting Magical (Ire) (Galileo {Ire}), whose only other lifetime Lasix start was when she ran second in the 2018 version of the Turf.
Lasix is on schedule to be completely phased out for all Breeders’ Cup stakes in 2021.
The irony can’t be understated: America is attempting to follow a European-styled model of prohibiting race-day medications. Yet the rules that were in place for this year’s Breeders’ Cup allowed for the European shippers to maximize the use of Lasix to their advantage.
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