Mike Watchmaker
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DRF Past Performances
ARCADIA, Calif. – Groupie Doll isn’t breaking out of that gate.
For the 10 horses ready to contest the $1 million Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint, that’s terrific news. Still, only one of them can take a huge step toward replacing the two-time champion atop the division, and that’s with a big performance Saturday in the seven-furlong race at Santa Anita.
ARCADIA, Calif. – The kids are all right.
Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner California Chrome and Belmont Stakes winner Tonalist both look like viable candidates to win the $5 million Breeders’ Cup Classic on Saturday at Santa Anita. Yet the favorite is another member of this year’s 3-year-old crop, Shared Belief, and so is the expected pacesetter, Bayern.
There really is no close approximation of the Santa Anita turf course among the regular circuit of racecourses in Europe. Two tight turns and grass cut short as a pool tabletop are not conditions to be found overseas, and there have been European jockeys surprised and overwhelmed by the demands of the smaller American ovals, Santa Anita in particular, upon riding Breeders’ Cup races with foreign horses.
TORONADO spent the summer hanging out with all the cool kids in Europe.
He started the year by winning the Group 1 Queen Anne Stakes at Royal Ascot, then finished second to the mighty Kingman in the Group 1 Sussex Stakes at Goodwood, and was second by just a head to the late-season upstart Charm Spirit in the Prix du Moulin de Longhchamp in Paris.
Those results have made him a deserving favorite in Saturday’s $2 million Breeders’ Cup Mile at Santa Anita.
Keith Desormeaux was doing the work. The 2-year-olds Texas Red and Danette were cooled out in their stalls while Marchman, the barn’s older pro, was getting his bath after a work on the grass. Wearing a morning growth of whiskers and a gray T-shirt flecked with sweat and straw, Desormeaux, 47, moved among them, letting himself feel a little bit of the excitement of the approaching Breeders’ Cup.
Given the choice between starting Coolmore colorbearer The Great War in either the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile or the Juvenile Turf, the partnership selected the former. It’s by far the taller order for the colt, a minor stakes winner in Europe who has raced exclusively on turf and never beyond 6 1/2 furlongs. Still, The Great War has a dirt-leaning pedigree with enough stamina influences to make him an intriguing longshot in a Juvenile field that lost favored American Pharoah to lameness on Tuesday, leaving a wide-open group of colts with some major distance questions.