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Led by eight returning winners from a year ago, two Kentucky Derby and Belmont Stakes winners, and a foreign line-up that numbers 75 strong, a total of 222 horses were pre-entered for the 14 Breeders' Cup races worth $30 million in purse money to be held Oct. 30-31 at Keeneland.
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No surprise on the pre-entry list could have possibly supplanted Nitrogen as a heavy favorite in this year's Breeders' Cup Distaff, making it all the more reasonable that no surprise came Wednesday.
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Breeders' Cup races typically offer horses a chance to do what they do best at the highest level. This year's Filly and Mare Turf falls into a different category.
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Something about the Breeders' Cup Mile loves recurrence. Five times a Mile winner has returned to win the race a second time. On seven other occasions, though, a first-time Mile winner failed in a repeat bid. Notable Speech will fall into one of those two camps Oct. 31 at Keeneland.
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Emphatic, the winner of the Grade 1 Alcibiades last month, led a group of 13 pre-entered in the Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies on Wednesday. A small army of improving contenders seem willing to challenge the Brendan Walsh trainee, but she remains the two-turn specialist with a clear head start.
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Daily Racing Form has served as the most trusted source of news and information about the sport since 1894, and moving forward we have decided to provide a free daily playbook – something that both hardcore horseplayers and casual observers can reference to get informed of each day’s action.
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It's not even Halloween yet, but trainer Graham Motion is already looking forward to Thanksgiving weekend, at least where his turf filly Bless Her is concerned. Motion believes the 1 5/16-mile distance of the $500,000 Jockey Club Oaks on Nov. 28 at Belmont Park will suit Bless Her very well. Motion just doesn't want to wait that long to run Bless Her so he plans to cut the Twirling Candy filly back to 1 1/8 miles in Friday's Grade 3, $200,000 Sands Point at Belmont.
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For a nine-race program without an allowance race or stakes, there is an underlying importance to Friday's action at Santa Anita.
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The fast worker Gray Dee One returns from a layoff in Friday's Woodbine headliner for nonwinners-of-two Ontario-sired allowance types and $40,000 claimers. She looks good to go in the seven-furlong Tapeta sprint that lured seven other fillies and mares.
Todd McCarthy had a Kentucky Sire Stakes hat trick for the second straight card on Tuesday afternoon at Cumberland Run as 3-year-old trotters kicked off their series.
