ELMONT, N.Y. – It isn’t often you’ll find a 6-year-old at the top of his game entering a Grade 1 stakes in the fall. Trainer Shug McGaughey has two such animals for Saturday’s stakes-laden card at Belmont Park.
McGaughey will send out Imagining in the Grade 1, $600,0000 Joe Hirsch Turf Classic and Abaco in the Grade 1, $600,000 Flower Bowl. Both are offspring of Giant’s Causeway, and both are in excellent form.
As agonizingly close to winning a Triple Crown race as Ahmed Zayat has come is as far away from success he’s realized in the Breeders’ Cup.
Zayat horses have finished second in three Kentucky Derbies, one Preakness, and one Belmont Stakes. In the Breeders’ Cup, Zayat is winless with 20 starters in 17 races. The closest one of his horses has finished is fifth.
“The Breeders’ Cup has been a mess for Zayat stable,” Zayat said this week. “Admittedly, in the early years, I think we were overreaching. We have not performed well.”
The third of five Breeders’ Cup Challenge races for the Grade 1, $1 million Juvenile Turf at Santa Anita on Oct. 31 will be held Saturday at Newmarket. The Group 2 Royal Lodge had 16 eligible runners at the six-day entry stage Monday, while the final field was to have been set by Thursday, according to Mark Dwyer, a representative of the track in England.
With the Breeders’ Cup returning to Santa Anita for the third straight year this fall, there was great anticipation for the 2014 event immediately following last year’s Breeders’ Cup Classic, what with so many of the top contenders remaining in training, like the victorious Mucho Macho Man, runner-up and 3-year-old champion Will Take Charge, and also-rans like Palace Malice, the Belmont Stakes winner, and Game On Dude, the beaten favorite.
Wouldn’t it be something if they all met again the next year?
A somewhat-cloudy picture of the leading North American candidates for the Grade 1, $2 million Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Turf should become clearer Saturday. On separate coasts, two Grade 1 preps are being contested – the Flower Bowl at Belmont and the Rodeo Drive at Santa Anita – that give the winners expenses-paid berths in the race, courtesy of the Breeders’ Cup Challenge Win and You’re In program.
He’s been out of sight and out of mind, but it’s not out of the question that Secret Circle will again be the horse to beat in this year’s Breeders’ Cup Sprint.
Despite not launching his 2013 campaign until three weeks before the Breeders’ Cup and having been idle for 18 months prior to that race, Secret Circle went postward as the 5-2 favorite and rallied to win last year’s Sprint. Secret Circle also has been lightly raced leading up to this year’s Breeders’ Cup, with a second-place finish in the Grade 2 Palos Verdes Stakes on Feb. 2 his only start this year.
Sunset Glow has to be considered the leader among the North American-based horses pointing to the Grade 1, $1 million Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf at Santa Anita on Oct. 31. Trained by Wesley Ward, she is coming off a win in the Grade 1 Del Mar Debutante on Aug. 30, and the way she won the seven-furlong race on Polytrack suggests that she won’t have any trouble stretching out to a mile.
No matter who wins the $600,000 Joe Hirsch Turf Classic at Belmont Park on Saturday or the $200,000 John Henry Turf Championship at Santa Anita on Sunday, one thing is virtually certain for the $2 million Breeders’ Cup Turf at Santa Anita on Nov. 1 – a European-based runner will be favored.
There is no other course in American racing quite like the about-6 1/2-furlong downhill turf course at Santa Anita. So, it is no surprise that when the $1 million Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint is run at Santa Anita – it will have been run there for the fifth time in the seven-year history of the race when it is run there again Nov. 1 – a premium is placed on prior success on the downhill.
The Grade 1 Chandelier Stakes at Santa Anita on Saturday is the second of four Win and You’re In Challenge Series races for the $2 million Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies, which will be run Nov. 1 at Santa Anita.
The remaining Win and You’re In races are the $400,000 Alcibiades at Keeneland on Oct. 3 and the $500,000 Frizette at Belmont Park on Oct. 4. Cristina’s Journey, trained by Dale Romans, is guaranteed a fees-paid berth in the Juvenile Fillies for having won the Pocahontas at Churchill Downs.
