Last year, the Oklahoma Derby produced the winner of the Grade 1, $1 million Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile.
This year, it could happen again.
Lone Sailor, who captured the Grade 3, $400,000 Oklahoma Derby in a three-way photo Sept. 30, is being considered for the Dirt Mile, trainer Tom Amoss said Monday. The interest in the race comes a year after Battle of Midway parlayed a runner-up finish at Remington Park into Breeders’ Cup paydirt at Del Mar.
Tuesday’s announcement that Enable, winner of the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe on Oct. 7 in Paris, will start in the Breeders’ Cup Turf on Nov. 3 at Churchill Downs, gives the $4 million race a confirmed odds-on favorite.
As of Wednesday, Enable was as short as 4-7 in future-book betting with British and Irish bookmakers to win the BC Turf at 1 1/2 miles.
Judging from history, the brilliant filly may be worth opposing.
Trainer Ben Colebrook will be the first to admit Imperial Hint is the horse to beat, and by “a pretty wide margin,” in the Breeders’ Cup Sprint. But there are five reasons why Colebrook will have plenty of confidence when he sends Limousine Liberal out against the favorite Nov. 3 – the five straight stakes, three of them graded, his horse has won at Churchill Downs, the site of the 2018 Breeders’ Cup.
Kentucky Oaks winner Monomoy Girl, a four-time Grade 1 winner who would lock up a divisional championship with a victory in the Breeders’ Cup Distaff, is training toward that challenge at her home base of Churchill Downs. But she isn’t the only 3-year-old filly from a talented crop based at the Breeders’ Cup host track.
Familiar foes Midnight Bisou and Wonder Gadot have both impressed on the work tab beneath the twin spires recently. If all three meet in the Distaff, it would be the third time this season.
The preliminaries are all but over for the Breeders’ Cup Mile, and in a typical year of the current era, the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes, part of British Champions Day at Ascot, would only possess marginal meaning vis-à-vis the BC Mile.
Apparently, this is not a typical year.
The QE II, over a straight mile, will be run Saturday, and perhaps seven horses that start in it might have Breeders’ Cup designs. Those animals are Recoletos, Roaring Lion, Lord Glitters, Lightning Spear, Expert Eye, Laurens, and Gustav Klimt.
Most of the leading candidates for the inaugural Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf Sprint are heading into the race off victories in their final prep races, including the Win and You’re In qualifiers. But one of the strongest candidates for the race may have turned in his most impressive performance in defeat recently.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Workouts the next two Saturdays at Santa Anita will determine Skye Diamonds’s status for the $1 million Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint as a sizable field for the Nov. 3 race continues to come into focus.
With four wins in 11 renewals of the race, trainer Aidan O’Brien knows what it takes to win the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf. That doesn’t mean he yet knows whom he’s taking to the race this year.
“We really don’t know about the mile turf for boys just yet,” O’Brien said Tuesday in a phone conversation, referring to the Juvenile Turf, contested over one mile on the relatively tight Churchill Downs grass course Nov. 2.
New York’s top juvenile fillies already accomplished more than merely winning Grade 1 races. Don’t believe it? Before wagering on the Breeders’ Cup, the Frizette at Belmont Park and the Spinaway at Saratoga merit review.
Neither race unfolded according to plan for Jaywalk and Sippican Harbor. One filly was going too fast, the other too slow.
Jaywalk entered the one-mile Frizette following an off-the-pace victory in a minor stakes at Delaware Park. In a phone interview this week, trainer John Servis said he expected similar tactics under new rider Joel Rosario.
MIAMI – Aside from trainer Antonio Sano, nobody knows the Breeders’ Cup Classic-bound Gunnevera any better than jockey Edgard Zayas.
Zayas has been Gunnevera’s regular workout rider throughout much of his career. He’s also been aboard him five times in the afternoon, winning twice while also guiding the son of Dialed In to second-place finishes in two of the sport’s most prestigious events, the Travers in 2017 and the Woodward earlier this summer at Saratoga.
