Breeders' Cup Mile: More Than Looks' 2025 plans likely include Maker's Mark Mile, another BC Mile

DEL MAR, Calif. – More Than Looks will be back for more.

The Breeders’ Cup Mile winner will get a winter freshening before returning for a 5-year-old campaign, trainer Cherie DeVaux said Sunday morning.

More Than Looks earned a career-best 105 Beyer Speed Figure for a career-defining victory on Saturday, coming from last to first under Jose Ortiz to win the Mile by three-quarters of a length. His turn of foot from the three-sixteenths pole to the wire was, as usual, scintillating.

DeVaux said that after shipping More Than Looks back to Kentucky she and the horse’s owners, Victory Racing Partners, will formulate a plan for a 2025 campaign with an obvious endpoint, another BC Mile, and a likely starting point in the Maker's Mark Mile at Keeneland in April.

DeVaux intended to run More Than Looks in the Maker’s Mark this past spring before More Than Looks injured himself in his Fair Grounds stall, delaying his 2024 debut until the Fourstardave Stakes on Aug. 11 at Saratoga. There, and then again in the Grade 1 Turf Mile in October at Keeneland, More Than Looks finished second behind Carl Spackler, who finished sixth in the Mile. A slow pace in the Fourstardave and again in the Turf Mile helped Carl Spackler, who has positional speed that More Than Looks lacks. The Mile pace Saturday turned hot, and More Than Looks capitalized.

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Second-place Johannes, a 4-year-old, and third-place Notable Speech, beaten a nose for second, both are expected to race again in 2025, if not before in Johannes’s case. Johannes’ trainer, Tim Yakteen, said just after the Mile that connections would convene in coming days and plot a race schedule for California’s best grass horse.

Three-year-old Notable Speech, winner this year of the English 2000 Guineas and the Group 1 Sussex, important one-mile races in England, is expected to return for a 4-year-old campaign, His narrow defeat snapped a three-year Mile winning streak for Godolphin, trainer Charlie Appleby, and jockey William Buick.

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