Churchill opener features Breeders' Cup-adjacent runners

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Pardon their dust – and all those nagging questions about the turf. Churchill Downs will begin its 19-day fall meet Sunday amid another massive renovation and unsettled issues concerning the new grass course.

The $200 million paddock renovation that began after the spring meet ended in early July is something of an inconvenience for ontrack fans, and racing over a problematic turf course will be quite limited. Nonetheless, the show goes on at Churchill with an opening-day Stars of Tomorrow card exclusively for 2-year-olds, many of them of genuine promise.

An 11-race opener that starts at 1 p.m. Eastern is highlighted by a pair of $200,000 stakes at 1 1/16 miles, the Rags to Riches and Street Sense, while surrounded by maiden and allowances with huge purses. In fact, including bonuses restricted to registered Kentucky-breds, the purse for every opening-day race is at least $120,000.

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The Rags to Riches (race 6, 3:31) drew a field of eight fillies, including a trio with tangential ties to the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies. Naughty Gal, winner of the Grade 3 Adirondack at Saratoga in August, was withdrawn from the main body of the Juvenile Fillies this week by trainer D. Wayne Lukas, while Hoosier Philly will be scratched from the Rags to Riches by Tom Amoss if it appears she’ll make it into the Friday race at Keeneland as an alternate. Furthermore, Fun and Feisty could have run in the Breeders’ Cup if Kenny McPeek had wanted, but her letdown in the Alcibiades earlier this month was not nearly as good as her September romp here in the Grade 3 Pocahontas, and a refreshing measure of realism was invoked.

In consideration of the Pocahontas, Fun and Feisty, with Brian Hernandez Jr. riding from post 7, figures as a deserving favorite when looking to leverage her late-closing style in a lineup with plenty of speed signed on.

The Grade 3 Street Sense (race 10, 5:35), to be run under the lights as daylight dissipates, has a little more depth to it. All but one of the 11 colts entered have already been tried in open stakes company, including two of the likely favorites, Jace’s Road (post 3, Florent Geroux) and Red Route One (post 6, Ricardo Santana Jr.), both of them third in graded company in their most recent starts. It really is a wide-open affair, with the winner more than likely to wheel back four weeks later in the Kentucky Jockey Club Stakes, which will be co-featured with its filly counterpart, the Golden Rod Stakes, when a second Stars of Tomorrow card is run Nov. 26.

Any or all of the opening-day races could be run over a sloppy track, given a 90 percent chance of rain. None are scheduled for turf – perhaps something of a moot point in view of the forecast – but the Churchill company line is that the $10 million course is being given time to mature and thrive, and at some point, its well-documented travails will be long forgotten. In any case, 16 turf races are in the condition book, including three in the Claiming Crown series, which Churchill is hosting for the first time Nov. 12, as well as four traditional fall stakes – the River City, Cardinal, Mrs. Revere, and Commonwealth Turf.

In a change from prior years, the Claiming Crown events are not being considered ungraded stakes. That tweak was made in order to allow Lasix treatment (no Lasix is permitted for any Kentucky stakes), thereby increasing potential field size. The Claiming Crown, first run in 1999 at Canterbury Park, had been held at Gulfstream Park the last 10 years.

The balance of the stakes schedule is highlighted by the annual fall-meet highlight, the Grade 1 Clark on Nov. 25.

The jockey colony is led by Tyler Gaffalione, who continues to emerge as the perennial top rider on this circuit. Luis Saez, who was battling Gaffalione for leading-rider honors into the last two days of the Keeneland fall meet that ended Saturday, will be absent Sunday to ride the rich Empire Showcase card on closing day of the Belmont at the Big A meet. However, Saez will ride the duration of the Churchill meet as has been planned for weeks, said his agent, Kiaran McLaughlin.

After Sunday, Churchill goes dark for two days before hosting racing on Wednesday, Thursday, and Sunday while taking a two-day break for the Breeders’ Cup at Keeneland. The meet runs through Nov. 27, after which four months of winter racing will be conducted over Tapeta at the new Turfway Park facility in northern Kentucky.

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