Breeders' Cup Mile: Notable Speech looks to join list of repeat winners

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.

Third in the 2024 Mile as a 3-year-old, Notable Speech won last year at Del Mar, and in a post-race press conference his connections announced that the horse would return to race at age 5. A primary goal: getting back to and winning a second Mile.

Notable Speech has made it – and has the right team behind him.

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Owner-breeder Godolphin, trainer Charlie Appleby, and jockey William Buick have won the Mile four times in the last five years. No other trainer or jockey has won the race more than three times, and only Flaxman Holdings, with five Mile trophies, has owned more Mile winners than Godolphin.

The $2 million Mile can accommodate 14 runners and drew far more pre-entrants than that, 23, but several slots could open up for horses not selected into the field.

The star England-based 4-year-old filly Blue Bolt, a miler back home, was entered with first preference for the 1 3/16-mile Filly and Mare Turf.

Hotazhell’s connections have the Turf as first preference, a 1 1/2-mile race that suits their horse far better than the Mile.

Classic Q also was entered with the Filly and Mare Turf as first preference; her connections intend to run there.

Ireland-based trainer Aidan O’Brien pre-entered four horses but almost certainly won’t ship all of them. The filly True Love seems certain to run, but O’Brien’s comments regarding Gstaad after his eighth-place finish Oct. 17 in the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes suggested the colt wouldn’t run again this year. Gstaad made it into the field, as did the O’Brien-trained Constitution River, who also ran below form Oct. 17 at Ascot in the Champion Stakes. Constitution River has been campaigned this season as a 10-furlong horse, not a miler, though O’Brien considered cutting him back to a mile two weeks ago at Ascot.

O’Brien’s fourth pre-entrant, Puerto Rico, is second on the list of horses not selected into the field and probably makes the race if O’Brien sends him. The one horse ahead of him, lightly raced Japan-based 3-year-old Ask Ikigomi, will get into the Mile. England-based Qirat, who’d be pace factor; Lugal, another Japan-based horse; and Kentucky-based Brilliant Berti are the next horses up.

Notable Speech is the 8-5 favorite on Daily Racing Form’s early morning line. His American opponents include Rhetorical, who won his second Grade 1 Coolmore Turf Mile earlier this month at Keeneland; Deterministic, second best to Notable Speech last out in the Woodbine Mile but North America’s leading middle-distance turf horse this year; California-based milers Cabo Spirit – another pace factor – and Formidable Man, second to Notable Speech last year; and Zulu Kingdom, no factor in the Coolmore Turf Mile but winner of the Grade 1 Maker’s Mark Mile this past April at Keeneland.

The other international horses in the field are Lake Forest, a troubled second behind Rhetorical in the Coolmore Turf Mile; and Ten Bob Tony, who has held his own with Europe’s best milers all year and won the Group 1 Queen Anne at Royal Ascot, defeating Notable Speech.

That marked one of two losses this year for Notable Speech, who got a BC Mile trial run in April, when he shipped to Keeneland and finished fourth in the Maker’s Mark Mile. Short of falling down, a horse could hardly have endured a worse trip. A clean run this time probably produces another Mile repeater.

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