ARCADIA, Calif. - New Year’s Day had barely crossed the finish line in the eighth race at Santa Anita on the first Saturday in November before trainer Bob Baffert started thinking about the 11th race on the first Saturday in May at Churchill Downs.
“When he started drawing off I thought this is a serious Derby horse,” Baffert said the morning after New Year’s Day drew off to win the $2 million Breeders’ Cup Juvenile by 1 1/4 lengths on Saturday.
ARCADIA, Calif. - Hall of Fame jockey Mike Smith won the Shoemaker Award for the second consecutive year as outstanding jockey of the two days of Breeders’ Cup races at Santa Anita on Friday and Saturday.
Based on a point system of 10-5-3-1 for top four finishes, Smith’s mounts gained 37 points, four more than Gary Stevens, who finished with 33 points.
Between them, the two veterans won five Breeders’ Cup races.
ARCADIA, Calif. - Magician, the winner of Saturday’s $3 million Breeders’ Cup Turf at Santa Anita, will be part of a formidable team of 4-year-olds for trainer Aidan O’Brien in 2014.
O’Brien said in a press conference on Saturday that Magician will stay in training next year, as will Ruler of the World, the winner of the 2013 English Derby. Add Kingsbarns, a Group 1 winner in England in 2012, and O’Brien’s powerful stable should have strong representation in the major European stakes for older horses.
Mike Machowsky said the hoof abscess bothering Caracortado is so minor that he hopes his homebred gelding will be ready for the $100,000 Hollywood Turf Express on Dec. 8.
“It wasn’t that big a deal except for the timing,” said Machowsky. “We should have it healed up and get him back in training so that we’re ready for the next one.”
Mucho Macho Man won the biggest race of the Breeders’ Cup, and nobody should be surprised that he earned the biggest Beyer Speed Figure at Santa Anita, a 112. But racing fans who examine all the figures on Saturday may suspect an error in the stakes for 2-year-olds. How could New Year’s Day win the Juvenile in slower time than the Juvenile Fillies and earn a higher figure?
New Year’s Day received a figure of 88 after running 1 1/16 miles in 1:43.52. She’s a Tiger and Ria Antonia each got an 82 after covering the same distance in 1:43.02 and finishing a nose apart.
ARCADIA, Calif. - Early Sunday morning, before heading to the airport to catch a flight back home to upstate New York, trainer Jeremiah Englehart was still savoring the victory by Ria Antonia in Saturday’s $2 million Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies, not ready to look too far ahead in the filly’s future.
That’s okay; his owner was already doing that for him.
ARCADIA, Calif. - Beholder, the champion 2-year-old filly of 2012 who won the biggest race of her career in Friday’s $2 million Breeders’ Cup Distaff, will stay in training in 2014, trainer Richard Mandella said on Sunday.
Owned by B. Wayne Hughes, Beholder is a leading contender for champion 3-year-old filly of 2013 following her win in the BC Distaff against top mare Royal Delta and the 3-year-old Princess of Sylmar, a winner of four Grade 1 races in Kentucky and New York earlier this year.
Beholder won three Grade 1 races this year prior to Friday’s BC Distaff.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Buff Bradley thought he was having a good time all week in California, but he didn’t know for sure. Only a big effort from Groupie Doll in the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint would allow him to look back and say: “That was a lot of fun.”
One evening early in the week, out on the Arcadia town, Bradley was reminiscing about one of the first times he ever won a graded stakes and how it was going to allow him to live out a fantasy. It was at the Grade 2 Indiana Derby at Hoosier Park in October 2004.
ARCADIA, Calif. - Did Secret Circle turn his three-week 2013 campaign into an Eclipse Award-winning campaign with his victory in Saturday’s $1.5 million Breeders’ Cup Sprint?
That will be the question voters have to answer after Secret Circle moved to the head of what has been a topsy-turvy division all season long with his game neck decision over a fast closing Laugh Track in the Sprint.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Wise Dan does not long linger over his Breeders’ Cup triumphs in Southern California. Late Saturday afternoon, for the second year in a row, he won the $2 million Breeders’ Cup Mile, and, just like last year, the horse left Santa Anita in the middle of Saturday night. By noon Eastern on Sunday, Wise Dan had arrived at the airport in Louisville, Ky., with only a van ride back to trainer Charlie LoPresti’s training base at Keeneland left on his travel itinerary.
