Breeders' Cup Sprint: Moquett gets second chance with Gentlemen’s Bet

ARCADIA, Calif. – Ron Moquett’s first trip to the Breeders’ Cup came with a 160-1 outsider, Asher, in the 1999 Juvenile Fillies. He’ll like his chances a whole lot better when he comes back a second time next Saturday with Gentlemen’s Bet, one of the leading contenders in the Sprint.

Asher finished a well-beaten sixth behind Cash Run in the 1999 Juvenile Fillies while up against one of the strongest fields in the history of the event.

“I picked a bad year to run in the Juvenile Fillies with Asher, that’s for sure,” Moquett said. “That field included horses like Chilukki, Surfside, Spain, and Darling My Darling, and none of them even won the race.”

Gentlemen’s Bet brings solid credentials into the Sprint, which figures to be one of the more wide-open events on the card. The son of Half Ours has won 5 of 8 career starts and finished third in his only Grade 1 test, the Vanderbilt, when setting a contested pace this summer at Saratoga. He is coming off a fourth-place finish as the 2-1 favorite behind Sum of the Parts in Keeneland’s Grade 3 Phoenix while making his first start over a synthetic surface.

“I ran him at Keeneland because our goal is to get to the Breeders’ Cup with enough left in the tank to be competitive and win the race, so I didn’t want to start shipping him around for one of the richer preps,” Moquett said. “And that’s exactly what the Phoenix was for our horse, a prep. Obviously, he’s not as good on synthetic as he is on dirt – just the fact he fell six or seven lengths off the early pace is proof of that – but I think my horse was finishing best of all and running down the leaders at the end, so I was pleased with the result.”

Gentlemen’s Bet will have his final breeze for the Sprint on Saturday at Churchill Downs before shipping to Santa Anita later that day. He’ll be ridden for the first time in the Sprint by Javier Castellano.