Crown of Thorns, second in four straight Grade 1 races, including last year’s Breeders’ Cup Sprint, and Here Comes Ben, winner of four straight, including the Grade 1 Forego most recently, were the two top horses pre-entered for the $1 million Dirt Mile.
This Dirt Mile will be the first in the event’s brief history actually to be run at one mile on dirt. It will also be the first Dirt Mile run around one turn.
Led by the sensational mares Zenyatta and Goldikova, both of whom will be seeking unprecedented third victories in the Breeders’ Cup, a total of 184 horses were announced on Wednesday as the pre-entries for the 27th Breeders’ Cup, a 14-race, $25.5 million extravaganza to be held Nov. 5-6 at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Ky.
Typically, the trainer of a horse must talk an owner out of aiming too high. But in the case of The Usual Q. T., it was up to trainer Jim Cassidy to plead the case for the Breeders’ Cup Mile to the partnership that owns the West Coast’s most proven grass miler. Cassidy’s argument won out, and The Usual Q. T. was among the 11 pre-entries in the $2 million Mile.
With division leader Majesticperfection retired and both Here Comes Ben and Crown of Thorns opting for the Dirt Mile, the $2 million Sprint is coming up one of the most wide-open races on next Saturday’s Breeders’ Cup card.
The six-furlong Sprint lured just a dozen pre-entries, topped by Girolamo, winner of the Grade 1 Vosburgh earlier this month, and Big Drama, who finished second behind Majesticperfection and Here Comes Ben in the Grade 1 A.G. Vanderbilt Handicap and Forego in his last two starts.
There are only five Grade 1 races in North America for 2-year-olds leading up to the $2 million Breeders’ Cup Juvenile. This year, those races were all won by different horses. And in something of a rarity, all five were among the 11 horses pre-entered for the Juvenile to be run Nov. 6 at Churchill Downs.
Anna Rose Napravnik, 22, bidding to become the first female ever to finish a Delaware Park meet as leading rider, collected the 1,000th victory of her career when she guided heavily favored Laughing Charlie ($3.20) to victory in Wednesday’s fourth race. Two races later, she got win number 1,001 aboard One Hot Toddy ($4.20), increasing her meet-leading total to 122.
Napravnik, who won her first career race at Pimlico on June 9, 2005, finished second in the standings at Delaware last year.
ELMONT, N.Y. − After Wildcat Brief’s third-place finish in the Grade 1 Vosburgh here Oct. 2, it would not have raised eyebrows if his connections had opted to run him in the $2 million Breeders’ Cup Sprint on Nov. 6 at Churchill Downs.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. – Trainer Doug O’Neill’s best chance in Saturday’s California Cup program at Hollywood Park is arguably Enriched in the $150,000 Classic, the richest of 10 races on the card.
By the time Enriched starts, O’Neill may already have had a successful day. Wednesday morning, as entries were being compiled, the trainer projected that he would have five starters in the seven stakes. The other races on the programs are for maidens.
Aces N Kings has asserted himself as one of the best 2-year-olds in the Mid-South region as a winner of 5 of 6 starts, and next month he will make the leap into graded competition. Ed Dodwell, who owns the horse with his wife, Caroline, said Aces N Kings is headed for the Grade 3, $1 million Delta Jackpot at Delta Downs on Nov. 20.
Dodwell said Calvin Borel will ride Aces N Kings, whose lone loss came by a head in the $80,000 Sunday Silence at Louisiana Downs in his last start Sept. 25.
LEXINGTON, Ky. – Keeneland Race Course will end its 17-day fall meet Saturday with a terrific running of the $150,000 Fayette Stakes, a Grade 2 race that drew a field to match, including colts who accounted for the two major 3-year-old events run over Polytrack here last spring.
Stately Victor, winner of the Grade 1 Blue Grass Stakes in April, was assigned post 1 in a field of 10, while Exhi, whose four wins in as many starts over synthetic surfaces include the Grade 2 Coolmore Lexington, got post 7.