Kingsbarns upsets Stephen Foster, earns BC Classic berth

Past the five-sixteenths pole at the end of the far turn on Saturday at Churchill Downs, Kingsbarns, a 9-1 shot, ranged up three deep to confront First Mission, a 4-5 favorite in the Stephen Foster Stakes. It was no contest – and it was not the public choice who asserted his superiority.

Winning his first Grade 1 while, appropriately, running the race of his life, Kingsbarns captured the $1 million Foster by 2 1/2 lengths, an upset, but a decisive one, and also earned an automatic fees-paid berth into the $7 million Breeders’ Cup Classic at Del Mar in November.

Pyrenees, a 10-1 chance who last month beat Kingsbarns in the Pimlico Special, saved second by a head over Skippylongstocking, who sucked out of contention after being wedged between First Mission and Kingsbarns but found late stride and turned in the race’s fastest final furlong, 12.10. Fourth, three-quarters of a length from third, came First Mission, who set a modest pace under only modest pressure but had no answer for Kingsbarns’ attack.

“He’s shown signs of brilliance along the way. It looked like today was really that breakthrough performance,” said Todd Pletcher, who trains Kingsbarns for Spendthrift Farm. Pletcher assistant Stu Hampson saddled Kingsbarns on Saturday. “He was always travelling well, blew the race open at the top of the stretch.”

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Luis Saez rode Kingsbarns ($21.90), who sat a good trip two paths off the fence, outside Pyrenees and behind pace-pressing Skippylongstocking. Considering the speed of Churchill’s dirt track on Saturday and the class of these horses, the Foster pace came up slow, the first quarter-mile going in 24.13, the half in just 48.38.

Saez decided to make the first move shortly after taking the far turn, never giving the leaders a chance to press their pace edge. Kingsbarns’ third quarter-mile went in 23.31, the fastest such fraction posted by any of the eight runners at any point in the race, and he followed that with a 23.64 to put the Foster to bed. Final time for the 1 1/8 miles over a fast track was 1:48.09, a clocking tamped down by the modest splits.

Kingsbarns, by Uncle Mo out of Lady Tapit, by Tapit, has been a tough horse to read. He easily won his first three starts, beating little in his first two and capitalizing on a very soft pace in the third, going wire to wire in the Louisiana Derby. Kingsbarns cracked under pace pressure finishing 14th in the Kentucky Derby, then lost a race he ought to have won, the ungraded Pegasus at Monmouth Park. His 3-year-old season had concluded in June.

Kingsbarns returned from a long layoff by winning a seven-furlong Gulfstream allowance race, then went to Keeneland in April and beat moderate opposition in the Grade 3 Ben Ali. At Pimlico, he contested a slow pace before Pyrenees came and got him, a performance that would not have won the Foster. On Saturday, Kingsbarns moved sharply and with confidence – a better version of his previous self.

“I think that was a huge performance today,” Pletcher said.

Kingsbarns shipped from Saratoga and ships back Tuesday, Pletcher said. The older dirt-route division feels ripe for a new face. White Abarrio, who won the 2023 Breeders’ Cup Classic, just was moved back to his original trainer and is merely jogging during morning training. Senor Buscador, winner of the Saudi Cup, has started working again in California but never has run as well around two turns as one. Skippylongstocking came into the Foster with the highest older-male Beyer Speed Figure in a stakes race of 1 1/8 miles or longer this year, 107, and Kingsbarns whipped him.

“We’ll get him home and try to lay out a plan toward the Classic,” Pletcher said.

The way Kingsbarns ran Saturday, and with no divisional standouts, that’ll be a plan worth monitoring.

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