Classic field has dirt-turf excellence flair

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Baseball has the setup man, the closer, and the designated hitter, football has defensive backs inserted on passing situations and pass-rushers who play just on third down. The age of specialization has accelerated in all sports, including racing, where rarely are top-class horses as good on turf as they are on dirt.

This year’s Breeders’ Cup Classic, though, offers several glorious exceptions to that trend. Catholic Boy, Thunder Snow, and Yoshida all have won Grade 1 races on turf and dirt, and Mendelssohn is a Grade 1 winner on turf who has won a Grade 2 on dirt and placed in two Grade 1’s. They harken back to the days when horses such as Cougar II, Dr. Fager, Greinton, and John Henry would move from stakes on turf to dirt throughout a campaign.

Yoshida made the first 10 starts of his career on turf before trying dirt in the Woodward. He won, and it changed the focal point of his fall campaign. Rather than go back to the turf, over which he won a Grade 1 at Churchill Downs in the spring, he’ll go in the Classic here Saturday.

“He’d always breezed as well on the dirt as he had on the turf, so it was always in the back of our minds, but he had been doing so well on turf,” said Bill Mott, who trains Yoshida.

“The Woodward was just a matter of timing. There was no other race for him. It was time to give him a shot. It seemed like it was something that needed to be done. I can’t say we were smart enough to know the outcome. Not only was it a reasonable thing to do, it was a necessity.”

Mott said the decision to try dirt with a turf horse involves weighing such factors as pedigree and the way a horse trains on dirt. He said the fact Yoshida is a grandson of Sunday Silence, and is out of the top sprint mare Hilda’s Passion, entered the equation.

“That had a lot to do with it,” he said. “I can’t say that I’m smart enough to get it right every time. Some don’t train well on dirt, so you try them on turf.”

And some disappoint on dirt, so turf becomes the only hope for success. Mott’s most famous runner, Cigar, was a moderate turf horse who was transformed by switching back to dirt. He won 16 straight, including the Breeders’ Cup Classic, and twice was named Horse of the Year.

“We never got the outcomes on turf we thought we would with him. We thought more of him,” Mott said. “He worked quite a bit on dirt, but he was just kind of average. But he was just kind of okay training on grass, too.”

Like Yoshida, Catholic Boy began his career on turf, but moved to dirt early in his career and has gone back and forth since, knocking off races such as the Belmont Derby on turf and the Travers Stakes on dirt in his last two starts.

Jonathan Thomas, Catholic Boy’s trainer, said Monday morning at Churchill Downs that the main reason Catholic Boy began his career on turf as a 2-year-old was because he could debut going two turns on that surface in July at Gulfstream Park, as opposed to having to sprint if he ran on dirt.

“It was strictly distance,” Thomas said, later adding a caveat: “He breezed well on the dirt, but he didn’t feel like the kind of horse we wanted to rush off his feet in a sprint.

“He’s by More Than Ready, and usually the first place you think with them is grass, so I don’t want to pretend pedigree didn’t influence us.”

Catholic Boy’s first dirt race was last December in the Remsen, which he won easily, and that afforded him a shot at Kentucky Derby preps this spring. After coming up short, he returned to turf this summer, and after two wins on that surface moved back to the dirt for the Travers. He enters the Classic with a three-race win streak.

Mendelssohn and Thunder Snow both scored their biggest dirt wins earlier this year on the Dubai World Cup card.

Mendelssohn won the United Arab Emirates Derby and has raced strictly on dirt since, most recently finishing third in the Jockey Club Gold Cup. He won the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf last year and will try to become the first horse to win Breeders’ Cup races on turf and dirt.

Thunder Snow, 4, a Grade 1 winner on turf at ages 2 and 3, romped in the Dubai World Cup, affording him a return visit to Churchill Downs, where he memorably threw a fit leaving the gate on an off track in the 2017 Kentucky Derby.

“He’s tough, doing really well,” his trainer, Saeed bin Suroor, said Monday morning. “I just hope the rain stays away Saturday.”