Breeders' Cup Juvenile Turf: O'Brien, Appleby bring serious overseas contenders
Aidan O’Brien has trained four winners of the $1 million Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf, while Charlie Appleby has trained three, and the 2022 Juvenile Turf could come down to O’Brien versus Appleby.
Appleby, the private trainer for Godolphin in England, won the 2021 Juvenile Turf with Modern Games, who raced for purse money only after an epic snafu just before the start of the race, where the colt mistakenly was scratched.
O’Brien, who trains in Ireland, mainly for the principals of Coolmore, last won the Juvenile Turf with Mendelssohn in 2017, while two years earlier he had captured the 2015 renewal at Keeneland with Hit It a Bomb.
O’Brien has two of the pre-entered horses that made the 14-horse main body of the one-mile Juvenile Turf, Cairo and Victoria Road. Neither will be as well bet as Appleby’s one entrant, likely favorite Silver Knott, which is not to say the O’Brien pair aren’t capable.
Cairo finished second in the same Kempton Park all-weather-surface race Hit It a Bomb won before his 2015 Juvenile Turf success, following that with his best race yet, a Group 3 win over 10 rivals racing left-handed at Leopardstown. Victoria Road has won three in a row, his last two in France, where in August he beat the filly Blue Rose Cen, who was one of the Juvenile Fillies Turf favorites before a minor injury took her out of contention.
Silver Knott has won 3 of 5 starts, two around right-handed turns, his most recent race a hard-fought win in the straight-course Autumn Stakes at Newmarket. Second in the Autumn was Epictetus, who returned to finish second Oct. 22 in the Group 1 Vertem Futurity Trophy.
Those are the only three Europeans in a race that drew 18 pre-entrants. The first horse excluded is Webslinger, who won the $500,000 Nownownow, a two-turn race at Monmouth, in his most recent start. It seems a puzzling exclusion. The horse he beat in the Nownownow, Oxymore, made the field’s main body. So, too, did Lachaise, the third-place finisher of the Pilgrim Stakes; Battle of Normandy, who was seventh in the Pilgrim and second in a slowly run renewal of the With Anticipation; and Gaslight Dancer, who has never run in a route race and finished second last out in the six-furlong Futurity in New York. Gaslight Dancer was pre-entered with first preference in the Juvenile Turf Sprint, and if he goes there Webslinger will make the field.
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The Pilgrim has proved a key Juvenile Turf prep in recent years – though it was run this year at Aqueduct rather than its usual site, Belmont – and its top two finishers, Major Dude and I’m Very Busy, look legit. Todd Pletcher, trainer of Major Dude, and Chad Brown, trainer of I’m Very Busy, each has won this race.
Andthewinneris notched an eye-catching win in the Bourbon Stakes over the Keeneland course and should prove a major player, while Packs a Wahlop, an easy winner of his three grass starts, is a California shipper with a chance.
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