Undefeated Flightline (Tapit) closed as the 4-5 favorite following the completion of betting Monday in Pool #2 of the Longines Breeders' Cup Classic Future Wager. After a 19 1/4-length victory in Saturday's GI TVG Pacific Classic at Del Mar, Flightline led the listing of 23 horses and one “all others” wagering interest in the second Future Wager pool for the $6-million Longines GI Breeders' Cup Classic, which will be run at Keeneland Nov. 5.
Pool #2 of the Future Wager generated $437,147 in total handle, more than doubling the $205,349 wagered in Pool #1, in which Flightline closed as the 2-1 favorite. The Longines Breeders' Cup Classic Future Wager was a win bet only with a $2 minimum.
Flightline was followed in the Pool #2 Future Wager by Epicenter (7-1), winner of the GI Runhappy Travers S. at Saratoga. GI Jockey Club Gold Cup winner Olympiad closed as a slight 8-1 choice over GI Whitney S. winner Life Is Good (8-1). GI Santa Anita Derby winner Taiba (33-1) was the fifth choice. The “all others” wagering interest closed at 36-1.
'TDN Rising Star'Flightline (Tapit), who puts hs unblemished 4-for-4 career mark on the line in Saturday's GI TVG Pacific Classic at Del Mar, has been made the 5-2 favorite for the second and final future wagers on this year's GI Longines Breeders' Cup Classic to be held at Keeneland Saturday, Nov. 5. The Longines Breeders' Cup Classic Future Wager is a $2 minimum and features win betting only.
Second favorite for the Future Wager is Epicenter (Not This Time), who saw his Classic stock rise with a comprehensive victory in last Saturday's GI Runhappy Travers S. at Saratoga. He is available at odds of 7-2 to begin, just ahead of 'Rising Star' and GI Whitney S. hero Life Is Good (Into Mischief) at 4-1.
Click here for the full list of Future Wager horses. With penny breakage in Kentucky, Flightline closed the first pool with a will-pay of $6.98.
Todd Pletcher was in a chipper mood one morning in his office near Saratoga's Oklahoma training track when I asked him about the Green sisters.
“Which one?” Pletcher replied, wryly.
“The one right outside the door.”
“Oh, the brown-noser,” Pletcher said with a laugh. “Do you want to listen in, Sophie?”
“No,” said the mocking English voice from the other side of the glass door. “I will never say anything nice about you again!”
Meet Sophie Green, the elder of the Green sisters, the younger being Amelia. The two sisters make up an enviable team, with Sophie opting to mainly keep her feet either on the ground or astride the barn pony, Bucky, and helping with runners and medication; Amelia riding some of horse racing's elite. Both put in full days under the Pletcher shedrow.
I had interviewed Sophie for this story several days before and was struck by her answer to my question: “What's the best part of working here for Todd?”
“Todd,” she replied without hesitation. “I have worked in restaurants and it's very much just about the job and making money, whereas here, he knows every horse, he cares about every horse, he knows every person that works for him. So, he is the best boss that I have ever had!”
This seems to be the sentiment of most everybody who has ever worked at the Pletcher barn, a long list of people going back decades, most of whom never leave. Ginny DePasquale has been there from day one. There's Tristan Barry, Byron Hughes, Anthony Sciametta, Juan Aguayo. Former assistants include trainers Michael McCarthy, Jonathan Thomas, George Weaver, Michael Dilger, and Michelle Nihei.
Dawn till dusk, when most exercise and pony riders are napping in the middle of the day–or perhaps downing a couple of cocktails at the all-too-many watering holes in Saratoga–the sisters Green are keeping a watchful eye on the Todd Squad.
Sophie and Amelia Green grew up in Thoroton, just east of Nottingham, England. “A place in the middle of nowhere, that nobody has heard of,” joked Sophie during that overcast morning.
The Green sisters followed the usual protocol for horse-mad girls growing up in rural England: school, ponies, and Pony Club.
“Grandad took us to the tack shop and bought us helmets and after that it was all over,” added Sophie, with one eye on Jack, her Jack Russell.
Both sisters finished school with Sophie opting to go to sixth form college for two years, working part-time in a local pub to pay her way and eventually becoming the manger. Amelia opted instead to follow the horses in Newmarket, first at the British Racing School and then apprenticing for the late Sir Henry Cecil.
Looking to broaden her horizons, Amelia wintered one year at Santa Anita Park. “I loved it,” said Amelia (hardly a surprise–who wouldn't want to trade the frozen tundra of Newmarket heath for palm trees and sunshine in the dead of winter?).
Unfortunately, after Amelia returned home to England, Cecil lost his battle with cancer that June.
“I worked for Lady Jane [Cecil] for a couple of months and then got my visa and went straight back to California to work for George Papaprodromou.
“George was a good boss; George was the best,” said Amelia with a smile, suddenly coming to life recanting tales of her old boss and likening him to a “best friend.”
Papaprodromou even legged her up onto one of his horses, with Amelia winning her first race aboard a horse called Twin Six (Include) in December of 2013 at Betfair Hollywood Park.
“It was surreal, I rode on and off for a couple of years whilst galloping for George,” Amelia said. “I did commit and go to Maryland for three months and that was when, ultimately, I realized I wasn't going to make weight, especially bug weight at 112 pounds. That was not the life I wanted to live.”
Amelia Green compiled a 9-148 record per Equibase.
“I came back to California; George insisted I get my assistant's license. I did that for a couple of years and then just plateaued. I wasn't sure whether I wanted to continue or go back to England. So, I spoke to Michael McCarthy and he said, 'Would you go work for Todd Pletcher on the East Coast?' And I was like, 'Sure, but isn't it hard to get a job there?' I called Todd the next day and he was like, 'Yeah, when do you want to start?'”
“It was obvious right from the start she was a star, an excellent rider, but also very interested in learning more on the ground and a very complete horseperson with ambition who just enjoys it,” said Pletcher.
Americanrevolution is one of Amelia Green's regular morning partners | Sarah Andrew
If you are looking for Life Is Good (Into Mischief), you had better be early as Amelia is the first to the track with him every day. Twenty years ago, Life Is Good would likely have been ridden by a man with his head cranked and bowed over as he is a very tough horse to gallop. But Green has gone for the finesse option and, while he's still not easy, he's a whole lot better than he was.
“He's a special horse, but he's not a cupcake to gallop,” said a now-wry-smiling Pletcher. “So, we have really focused a lot on trying to ration his talent and his speed. She gets along with him very well and has been a huge part of his success.”
Amelia has been around a lot of good horses in her five-year tenure at the Pletcher barn. There is Nest (Curlin) (Amelia is careful to remind me she is just borrowed from another rider, Nora, who didn't make the trip to Saratoga), Americanrevolution (Constitution), Mind Control (Stay Thirsty), Corniche (Quality Road)–whose retirement was just announced–and some unraced 2-year-olds that have not been tested yet.
None, however, as talented as Life Is Good, who now carries the nickname “Scooter.” According to Amelia, “When he first got here, he would just scoot off, but he's so much better now. Did you see him without the draw reins? This time last year there is no way I could have ridden him without them.”
“Is he your all-time favorite horse?” I enquired, already knowing the answer as “Scooter” was burrowing in Amelia's pocket for another peppermint. “Yes, he's the one,” she said.
Interestingly, Amelia admits she wouldn't normally get to ride the colts in England.
“I think it's a very old school thing, the girls are smaller in England and usually ride the fillies. I honestly think I had ridden maybe one or two colts before I arrived in America.”
Enter Winnie, Amelia's dog, who is part Great Dane and who at this moment is chasing Jack (Sophie's dog) down the shedrow past the likes of Mind Control, Capensis (Tapit), Malathaat (Curlin), Dynamic One (Union Rags), Happy Saver (Super Saver), and Chocolate Gelato (Practical Joke), none of which could care less as the feed cart has just arrived, much to the delight of Life Is Good, who is doing his best “Hungry Hippo” impersonation.
Sophie, who much like her sister plateaued working as a manager in a restaurant and was at a crossroads in life when Amelia suggested almost three years ago that she come over and work for Pletcher.
“We really didn't get on that well as kids,” said Sophie, older by just two years.
“So, who's the boss?”
“I am,” jumped in Amelia.
“And she's also the favorite child,” jabbed back a smiling Sophie. “It's OK. I'm used to it!”
Do they often get confused for each other?
“Well, actually,” interjected Sophie, “I get 'Amelia's sister,' not even Sophie. I think a few people have seen me around now so they know we are different but it's still 'Amelia's sister.'”
Is Sophie envious of her speed-queen sister?
“Oh God, no,” said Sophie, almost a little too quickly. “All our lives Amelia was the one who wanted to go fast. I'm quite content going slow. Even skiing she was always the first one down. I'm quite content riding the pony.”
Pletcher echoes the sentiment. “No, I think she's comfortable in her role. She's done a great job with our pony, Bucky, who had special needs when we first got him,” he said. “She's done a great job with some of our flighty fillies as well.”
In this instance, you really can't say that the grass is any greener on the other side of the fence. Take your dystopian pick: the floods of Kentucky, or the desiccation of Europe, where I've just returned from a vacation that seamlessly united the city parks of England and Italy in the same wasteland, with just a few bleached spikes still protruding from the baked, ashen earth.
However illusory, then, it's a relief to find enough recognizable vegetation salvaged Stateside at least to host all three of Saturday's Grade I races. True, it evidently hasn't been at all straightforward doing so at Churchill, where they have resuscitated the Arlington Million and Beverly D. on an oasis card otherwise contested entirely on the main track.
After breaking so many hearts by closing its cherished Chicago home, Churchill have not only restored the Million but also a commensurate prize. It would be interesting to learn the duration of this commitment; and indeed to have some update about the funds generated in Arlington's final year, exceeding $750,000, in principle reserved for its 2022 purses. The last I heard, Illinois horsemen were pretty vexed about the idea that Churchill could sit on that dough pending some “successor” investment.
Even if Churchill might this time be credited with vaguely altruistic intentions, this feels like a pretty uncomfortable sanctuary for the races evicted from Chicago: a turf track that has evidently been a nightmare to bed down, and can't accommodate a 10th furlong anyway. That certainly seems to have been the conclusion of most European stables. Even domestically, the races appear to have fallen somewhat between stools: on the one hand, their abbreviation has put off the stayers; on the other, they've now had to compete with the GI Fourstardave H.
The true refugees, of course, aren't the races themselves, but those Illinois horsemen who for so long worked at one of the jewels of the American Turf. That's why there will be plenty of horsemen at Colonial Downs and elsewhere raising a glass, this weekend, to the memory of Noel Hickey.
Hickey's loss could not have been more poignantly timed–evoking, as it did, memories of a heyday (above all in grass racing) that Irish Acres shared with Arlington itself. Never mind the big guy, Buck's Boy, how about Bucks Nephew, another son of Hickey's beloved stallion Bucksplasher, who was still winning stakes at eight? And some of the other stalwarts, at a lower level, were still more indefatigable: Plate Dancer (16-for-69) and Classic Fit (23-for-76), for instance, both kept going to 11.
Their breeder resolved to buy Bucksplasher, despite a mediocre race record, after discovering that only eight Northern Dancer mares were ever bred to Buckpasser. Hickey was a colorful character, a gifted athlete himself in his youth before building up a payroll of 940 employees as a broker. But he does now seem to belong to another era, which makes it all the more remarkable that a near-contemporary should be extending such an exhilarating rejuvenation.
Wayne Lukas will be 87 a couple of days before the GI Spinaway S., where he now hopes to saddle Naughty Gal for a captivating showdown with another daughter of Into Mischief, Prank–herself yet another credit to the extraordinary work of the Lyster family at Ashview Farm. Having found a potential heir to Secret Oath (Arrogate) in last weekend's GIII Adirondack S. winner, Lukas has meanwhile eagerly commenced the next turn of the carousel by crossing the road to Fasig-Tipton and spending nearly $2.7 million on five yearlings, half of it devoted to a single Medaglia d'Oro colt.
Lukas apparently predicated this spree on a theory he has developed, over the years, “on angles and skeletons [and] the way they're put together.” If he wants to cover his costs, he could just jot the details down on a piece of paper and offer it to the highest bidder.
I am always bewildered by the way owners stampede to fashionable young trainers, especially in Europe where neglect of seasoned operators tends to be even more bovine. With horses, you would have thought that all the enthusiasm and energy in the world will never measure up to sheer experience. If you owned the Kentucky Derby favorite, and he came up with a problem on the eve of the race, would you rather the decisions were being made by someone dealing with the issue for the first time, or someone who has done so hundreds of times over several decades?
We associate youth with audacity, but we're really talking about a form of naivete. It's experience that truly fortifies your nerve. And that can also be true of jockeys. (At least, that is, until the poignant parting of the ways after they suddenly figure that there must be jobs out there where you don't have to be followed all day by an ambulance.) It took an insight and assurance years in the making, for instance, for Mike Smith to show such glaring restraint with Life Is Good (Into Mischief) at Saratoga last summer that the Equibase comment baldly states: “overconfident handling.”
Never mind that running Jackie's Warrior (Maclean's Music) to a neck over seven furlongs shows the kind of generosity that simply doesn't require coercion. This was one of those occasions–returning from a six-month lay-off, and for a new barn–when the jockey's top three priorities were: the best interests of the horse, the best interests of the horse, and the best interests of the horse.
People seldom dare to say so, because so much of the sport's funding comes through the windows, but there are times when even the wagering dollar has to step in line. After all, the kind of handicapper who thinks he or she deserves the homage of horsemen should reciprocate with a little respect the other way; should understand (and be reconciled to) the possibility that a prudent jockey, in these quite particular circumstances, might want to avoid giving his mount an experience that could cause him to regress.
They can cope with that idea when a horse makes its debut, and here was another case that blatantly called for their absolution. Whether or not connections share this view–and the fact is they have named other jockeys ever since–I feel pretty certain that Life Is Good is only as good as he is because Smith rode him that day with such length of perspective.
You very rarely see a horse break with quite the gusto that suffused Life Is Good last weekend. He was practically airborne, so eager has he remained for his vocation. And, however innate his competitive instinct, Smith certainly made sure that it was not soured.
If only more American jockeys could show corresponding conviction when riding a route on grass. On the same card last weekend, War Like Goddess (English Channel) won the GII Glen Falls S. off a halfway split of 1:17.51. And this was scalding, compared with her previous win at the Keeneland spring meet, where they had staggered along in 1:19.88.
These numbers condemn American horsemen just as instructively as the dismal averages of most turf stallions at the yearling sales. A mile and a half of grass gives these guys a nosebleed. War Like Goddess is by a wonderful stallion–and all this ties in pretty obviously with our lament a couple of weeks ago, over the crisis in Kentucky turf breeding now that Kitten's Joy is also gone–but these glacial splits show a community that cannot come to terms with the perplexing combination of grass and distance.
The fact is that hardly anybody takes these horses seriously. That's nearly always the case at the sales ring, while jockeys ride them as though indulging some kind of niche, semi-humorous weirdness. But do you remember Highland Reel (Ire) (Galileo {Ire}), under a proper Irish horseman, being rushed into a clear lead to win the GI Breeders' Cup Turf? He reached halfway in 1:12.7. That's over seven seconds faster than in that Keeneland race! And they couldn't lay a glove on him.
As I'm always saying, there's no less of a cultural logjam on the other side of what should always be a two-way street, with Europe's disastrous detachment from dirt blood. But all you guys who have flown from Saratoga to Deauville, if you want to import serious grass blood, then please get your teams to wake up and import some serious grass attitude, as well.
