The full field for the Grade 1, $1 million Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf is such a well-matched group that it’s difficult to narrow the options down to just a handful of runners. There are 10 stakes winners entered, and of them, seven have accounted for group or graded races. In addition, eight entrants last raced in Europe. It makes for a tough handicapping assignment, but the tradeoff is price. Below is one breakdown on the chief players for the one-mile turf race.
Win candidates
As if he needed any help, defending Dirt Mile titlist GOLDENCENTS drew the rail with a short run to the first turn. He cleared for the lead from post 11 last year, and while he was helped by a speed bias, it’s also true that he set a sizzling pace. He has run only four times this year, beginning with a huge effort in the Met Mile, and comes in off the same trio of races in Southern California as last year. While he was run down late in the Santa Anita Sprint Championship, it took a last quarter in 23.06 seconds from Rich Tapestry to do it.
ARCADIA, Ca. – Aktabantay is out of the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf after suffering a foot injury, trainer Hugo Palmer announced.
“Having moved beautifully this morning, Aktabantay was found to have a sore foot back at the barn. He has been scratched,” Palmer posted on his Twitter feed late Thursday morning.
Clearly, any discussion of the 2014 running of Friday's Breeders' Cup Distaff has to revolve around impressions of UNTAPABLE (#10), who will go into the gate as the favorite. She has enjoyed an exceptional season, winning 5 of 6 starts, with her only loss coming against males in the Grade 1 Haskell. She has tactical speed, is training very well, and she comes into this off a win in her latest.
Those are the positives. Here are the negatives:
It was a sight for sore eyes. California Chrome was putting on a show Tuesday in the Santa Anita saddling barn, up on his hind legs, manhood on display, giving Alan Sherman fits on the ground and Willie Delgado all he could handle at the wheel.
“The reins were in my lap,” said Delgado, the man with the slick red chaps. “I had ahold of mane with one hand and used the other to push him away from the partition. Did I have him? Sure, I had him, just like he had me.”
ARCADIA, Calif. – Trainers Mark Casse, Christophe Clement, Ken McPeek, John Sadler, and Wesley Ward have won a lot of races in their careers.
Oddly enough, none of the quintet has won a Breeders’ Cup race. It’s not for lack of trying. The five horsemen entered this year’s two-day Breeders’ Cup event a combined 0 for 112 in the series but have many live contenders this year.
Clement, winless with 23 starters, has three horses in this year’s event: Belmont Stakes and Jockey Club Gold Cup winner Tonalist (Classic), Irish Mission (Filly and Mare Turf), and Summer Front (Mile).
ARCADIA, Calif. – Sweet Reason will be equipped with a transparent green bubble over her right eye Saturday in the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint because of an injury she incurred in her last race, the Sept. 20 Cotillion at Parx.
“It doesn’t affect the way she goes,” trainer Leah Gyarmati said. “It’s just there as a precaution.”
ELMONT, N.Y. – “So, what are you planning to do? You going back?”
The questions, posed to him by his wife, Leona, caught John Velazquez by surprise. They came last November, a few weeks after Velazquez was seriously injured in a spill at Santa Anita early on Breeders’ Cup Saturday. Among other issues, Velazquez had to undergo surgery to remove his spleen.
ARCADIA, Calif. – In 2012, European-based horses won two Breeders’ Cup races when the event shifted back to Santa Anita, which had replaced its synthetic main track with dirt since previously hosting the event. That was decent if unspectacular, but last year, the Euros came back with a vengeance, winning five Breeders’ Cup races. This year’s European contingent is long, and it is strong. Let’s take a look, race by race, listed in post-position order, at the European invasion.
Filly and Mare Turf
The undefeated Shared Belief is going to be the clear-cut favorite in the Breeders’ Cup Classic, and even his detractors (Are there any? How could there be?) would probably concede that it is impossible to rule him out of the number, whether you are engaging in horizontal or vertical wagers. Even if he might be more comfortable on synthetic tracks than the sort of dirt surface he will race on Saturday – and that is very open to debate – Shared Belief is just so good that it’s hard to envision him not being involved in the Classic outcome in a major way.
