Breeders’ Cup Juvenile: All Fellowship’s connections can do is wait and hope
The waiting is the hardest part.
Fellowship, the winner of the $500,000 In Reality division of the Florida Sire Stakes, was relegated to four deep on the preference list for the $2 million Breeders’ Cup Juvenile. The race drew 19 pre-entrants. Only 14 can run.
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Despite winning the In Reality, rallying from last in a 14-horse field, Fellowship was placed below several horses who have simply won maiden races and competed in graded stakes.
“If we don’t know that we’re in the body by Friday, then we’re not going to come,” Stanley Gold, the trainer of Fellowship, said Thursday. “We don’t want to come for nothing; that’s where that stands. It’s unfortunate, but that’s the system.”
Gold said he was not even considering the Breeders’ Cup until Fellowship’s victory in the In Reality. Last early, Fellowship made a sustained run while forced to go six wide and still drew off to win by 4 1/2 lengths.
“The way he ran, I’d have to give him a shot,” Gold said.
So, Fellowship needs four defections to get into the Juvenile. It’s possible that could happen. Isotherm and Hollywood Don, both in the body of the Juvenile, are likely to go in the Juvenile Turf. That would put Conquest Big E and Waterloo Bridge in the Juvenile field.
Waterloo Bridge is trained by Aidan O’Brien and is a Group 2 winner on turf. He is relegated to five deep on the preference list for the Juvenile Turf. It remains to be seen if O’Brien ships the horse here at all.
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Next up is Siding Spring, who was put ahead of Fellowship after winning a maiden race and finishing third in the Grade 3 Bourbon, both turf races. Trainer Mark Casse said Thursday that he is unlikely to make Siding Spring’s first dirt race the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile.
“We’re only 50-50 to run even if we got in,” said Casse, who said the Street Sense Stakes at Churchill Downs on Nov. 1 seemed a more prudent spot for Siding Spring to make his dirt debut.
Gold, who doesn’t often venture out of Florida, sounds like he’d like the opportunity to run Fellowship in the Juvenile.
“He’s ready,” said Gold, who won the 2010 Juvenile Fillies with Awesome Feather. “He breezed three-quarters in 1:13, and he came out of it better than he went into it.”