Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies: Slow times make favorites hard to figure

The favorites for the 2018 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies may be exceptional, yet neither filly ran exceptionally fast last time out.

Serengeti Empress won the Pocahontas Stakes by more than 19 lengths, but her 1:45.47 time in the 1 1/16-mile race at Churchill Downs earned a 78 Beyer that does not rank among the top two dozen figures this year by a juvenile filly on dirt.

Bellafina is slower still. Although she won the Del Mar Debutante by more than four lengths, her 1:25.51 time for seven furlongs earned a mere 75 Beyer.

Slow times and corresponding figures aside, Serengeti Empress and Bellafina open as Juvenile Fillies one-two favorites in the Daily Racing Form preliminary line. Serengeti Empress is 4-1; Bellafina is 5-1. How could fillies with speed figures so low be rated so high?

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Tom Amoss, trainer of Serengeti Empress and an astute handicapper/broadcaster, noted that “speed figures are predominantly the way races are judged in the U.S.”

“They are probably the major ingredient in handicapping,” Amoss said. “But they’re not the only ingredient. You have to look visually at what’s going on in the race.”

Serengeti Empress set a comfortable pace and ran away in the Pocahontas. Before that she won the Ellis Debutante by more than 13. Supporters will reason she could have won both races by more. Cynics may conclude that in the Pocahontas she was simply best of a bad lot.

“I don’t know what that field was or wasn’t – only time will tell,” Amoss said. “I just know she did it the right way, with a lot left in the tank.”

Final time and ordinary figure are open to interpretation said Amoss, who utilizes other figure services.

“Speed figures are important; I recognize that,” Amoss said. “I go into the [Breeders’ Cup] with a filly that in some camps will offer value because her speed figure is not that good from her most recent race. And for the naysayers, this is a filly that they can play against based on her speed figure. Obviously, I’m in the former camp.”

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Serengeti Empress, 3 for 4, is based at Churchill Downs and will train into the Breeders’ Cup with seven weeks between starts. She also has a home-court edge.

“Don’t think there is not an advantage to walking out of your own stall and going to run in a race,” Amoss said.

Though the career-high Beyer for Serengeti Empress is just 84, that is no big deal. High figures are not essential for Breeders’ Cup success. Four of the last five Juvenile Fillies winners went into the race with a career-high Beyer of 82 or less.

At least Serengeti Empress has won going two turns. Bellafina, the top filly in California, will stretch out for the first time Saturday at Santa Anita in the Grade 1 Chandelier Stakes at 1 1/16 miles.

Beyond uncertainty regarding distance, Bellafina enters with figures going the wrong way – her 75 Beyer in the seven-furlong Del Mar Debutante followed a 90 she earned racing six furlongs in her previous start.

Bellafina was not alone. Every Debutante runner declined in Beyer Figure next out, including three favorites. Bellafina, in scoring her second straight 4 1/4-length stakes win, dropped 15 points. Runner-up Mother Mother fell 20 points, and fourth-place finisher Brill dropped by 29 points.

Simon Callaghan, who trains Bellafina, acknowledges the low-rated Debutante was a head-scratcher.

“I can’t believe that all three fillies ran way below their best,” he said. “I could certainly see one of them not firing. I don’t think it’s likely that all three of them ran badly.”

But they did. Racing over an unusually slow Del Mar surface, Bellafina sizzled the opening half-mile in 44.68 seconds, then wobbled her final three furlongs in 40.80 seconds while running on her wrong lead to the finish. The race produced more questions than answers.

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Beyer Figures incorporate track variant into the figure, but both visually and numerically, the Debutante was not pretty. Andy Beyer believes pace and distance are major influences on final time in races for young horses stretching out.

“We have observed that the figures of early-season 2-year-old flashes often plummet when they stretch out in distance, even if it’s just from five furlongs to six furlongs, or from six furlongs to seven furlongs,” Beyer said.

“I think that the reasonable explanation is that the slow time was the result of the extremely fast pace. Two-year-old fillies dueling in 21.93 and 44.68 are eligible to collapse – and they did collapse, running the final furlong in 14.75 seconds. Two days later the [Del Mar] Futurity was run over a track with an identical variant, according to my calculations, and they set a pace of 22.53 and 45.35. The fillies will certainly run better in a more normal pace scenario.”

Bellafina is expected to remove blinkers Saturday in an effort to ration her speed, and if the Chandelier unfolds at a normal tempo, the race could produce the main challenge to current Breeders’ Cup favorite Serengeti Empress. Others expected in the Chandelier are Mother Mother, Der Lu, Brill and Del Mar May