Weekend GamePlan for Saturday, Sept. 28, 2019: Picks for Jockey Club Gold Cup, Lukas Classic, and Japan Turf Cup

If you combined the Jockey Club Gold Cup and the Awesome Again, the two Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Classic preps scheduled for Saturday, you’d have a hell of a race. But then I guess that’s what the Breeders’ Cup itself is for.

It’s the Awesome Again that sports the bigger field of dirt-route horses, and over that race’s 1 1/8 miles I figure favored McKinzie just goes out and wins. The number of career-best Beyers produced in the Pacific Classic seems worth noting, and I’m definitely taking a “prove it” approach with Higher Power, who easily ran the best race of his life to win the Del Mar fixture.

The horse that tempted me at Santa Anita was Cleopatra’s Strike in the John Henry Turf Cup (the SoCal turf contingent continues to really underwhelm), but there’s just too little upside with the 6-year-old.

At Belmont, Wow Cat was on the worst part of the Saratoga track while Midnight Bisou was on the best when she overwhelmed Wow Cat in the Personal Ensign. Midnight Bisou has the rail at odds of 2-5 in the Beldame while Wow Cat drew well on the outside – and it probably won’t matter.

Jockey Club Gold Cup Invitational

I sit in the “Tacitus is unlucky” camp rather than the “Tacitus is a fraud” camp – which doesn’t mean I think Tacitus is any world-beater. I do think if you reversed his trip and Code of Honor’s in the Travers you might well come up with a different winner, as Code of Honor stayed far off the dead rail (his “8w upper” short chart comment is the mark of a favorable trip that day) while Tacitus spent far too much time on the fence or one or two paths away from it. This is the race where blinkers could really help Tacitus, and I’d rate those two 3-year-olds about equally here.

Vino Rosso was held out of the Woodward to await this race, but among the four entrants that have a chance, he’s the least interesting to me. The number from the Gold Cup over this 1 1/4-mile trip is fine, but Gift Box, who was second, already had gone a little over the top by that race and third-place Lone Sailor isn’t flattering anyone in a Grade 1 race.

That leaves us with Preservationist. If the morning line holds and Preservationist really is something like the 9-5 second choice, that’s value. I’ll remain skeptical of this 3-year-old crop until they can prove otherwise, and Preservationist is a very good older horse only giving up four pounds to the youngsters. No idea what went wrong in the Whitney, but Preservationist was nowhere near himself in that start, which now looks like the outlier in his string of strong form. He showed more courage to win the Woodward with a tough trip than I knew he had in him, and this 10-furlong trip with a cozy outside draw around the wider Belmont oval plays to all Preservationist’s strengths. I expect him to win by open lengths.

Lukas Classic

Pace-wise, this race appears to have two main speeds in Quip and Pioneer Spirit, and then three more horses that want to stick close to the front end. I think they’ll sail along at a decent clip down the backstretch and that we could see some early attacks at or before the three-furlong marker. It’s Silver Dust who has the most consistent recent form and I expect him to produce another solid performance, but nine furlong pushes his distance limits and this race could fall to an outsider making the last run – a horse like Sir Anthony.

Don’t take the morning line here too seriously, as it’s hard to see Sir Anthony being a longer price, for instance, than the two inside-drawn horses, but he does seem likely to hit double-digit win odds. His Skip Away second and Cornhusker win show two things: He’s got the quality to contend in a race at this level, and that he needs at least nine furlongs for his best lick. This is just a 4-year-old, and I won’t hold the slow-paced Mountaineer race last out against him.

Japan Racing Association

It looks like Highland Sky and Postulation could be the favorites in the 12-furlong Japan Racing Association Stakes – which makes Nakamura look like an interesting play at anything approaching his morning-line price.

Just a 4-year-old, Nakamura has three wins and a third over the Laurel course, and the loss came on a yielding course last fall in a race where Channel Cat and Admission Office, two really nice horses, finished in front of him. Jumped in class and stretched to 11 furlongs last out at Saratoga, Nakamura made a sustained five-furlong move that included a final three furlongs in 33.91, and I think he’ll have no trouble staying the 1 1/2 miles here.