Overseas BC shippers begin to get their bearings at Churchill

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – It began when two-time Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe winner Enable stepped onto the Churchill Downs racing surface alongside her stablemate Roaring Lion, winner of four straight Group 1 races, at about 7:40 Monday morning and ended about two hours later when 2017 Breeders’ Cup Turf-winner Talismanic, walking with fellow Breeders’ Cup Turf entrant Waldgeist, left the track through the same gap.

Pocket Dynamo didn’t go out to exercise Monday (though nothing is amiss with the colt), but a couple of dozen other overseas shippers trekked out from their temporary quarters in the Breeders’ Cup quarantine facility at the west end of the Churchill backstretch.

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The bulk of the Europeans arrived late Friday night at Churchill Downs after flying to the U.S. from England. Godolphin sent its BC runners Saturday, and trainer Aidan O’Brien had a plane of horses en route from Ireland on Monday. O’Brien has pre-entered and shipped 15 horses, but only 13 are likely to make it into the final fields of eight Breeders’ Cup races.

Depending on what time they touch down in America, overseas shippers clear USDA quarantine in time to train their second or third day here. The horses on the England flight cleared in plenty of time for Monday exercise, but the Godolphin shipment got out of quarantine just in time to make it to the track before training ended Monday.

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International shipping has become such routine science that most horses these days barely seem to notice it. Nearly all the Europeans were full of life, even Roaring Lion, who had a demanding race Oct. 20 when he won the Group 1 Queen Elizabeth II Stakes. If that effort took a toll on the colt it wasn’t showing Monday as he bounced and played coming onto and off the track.

Most everyone was on good behavior, though the French 2-year-old filly Lily’s Candle made a brief try at sending her rider sprawling just after getting out onto the track. The BC Juvenile Fillies Turf-bound Lily’s Candle is not evil, just full of mischief – “sassy” in the words of people who’ve spent time with her the last couple of days. The gray bundle of energy almost created her own quarantine issue when she managed to grab a paper documenting results of routine veterinary work and began chewing it.

Lily’s Candle’s troublemaking, however, quickly was snuffed out.