I'm so giddy.
For a guy who's undergoing willful injury to his pelvic region (read: I'm getting a vasectomy) on Thursday, I couldn't be much more excited about this week. One hundred and forty hours to go to the Breeders' Cup Classic and an absolutely epic showdown between the likes of AMERICAN PHAROAH and BEHOLDER (and plenty of others that I'll probably actually bet rather than those two, but we'll get to that later).
The post position draw is tomorrow, Oct. 26, so I won't get too in-depth with my previews just yet. But given my level of excitement, I need to blow off some steam here, so what follows is a reverse 13-1 ranking of the races I'm most excited for:
#13 JUVENILE TURF: Listen, I watch a lot of horse racing. And the list of names on the pre-entries list is almost wholly unfamiliar to me. Some of the Euros making the trip over seem to be pretty good at first glance, but if this wasn't a Breeders' Cup race, I would think about not betting it at all.
#12 JUVENILE FILLIES TURF: This race at least has some recognizable "bigger" names in line to run against the strong Euro contingent. I'm still not too excited about betting a number of juveniles going long on the turf for the first or second time, but it's one of the better juvenile fillies turf renditions I can remember.
#11 TURF SPRINT: Don't get me wrong, I like some of the horses here, but this doesn't do much more for me than any other random G3 turf sprint across the nation on any other random Saturday. This was one of the most exciting races last year with BOBBY'S KITTEN storming from well back late to claim the title, but that was also on the downhill turf course at Santa Anita vs. a rather pedestrian 5.5 furlongs at Keeneland.
#10 F&M TURF: It's nice to see STEPHANIE'S KITTEN keep rolling along and all, and seeing her against the seemingly top-notch Euros that are coming will be nice, but the rest of the American contingent is like the rest of this division ... uninspiring.
#9 JUVENILE: Maybe NYQUIST will show us that we have an incredible Kentucky Derby candidate on our hands. But I doubt it given the pedigree, and none of these others juveniles have really shown me all that much just yet. I hope we do see something transcendent, however, and that's always the fun part of this race.
#8 F&M SPRINT: This race might turn out to be better than I'm giving it credit for right now, but JUDY THE BEAUTY on real dirt is pretty "meh," I'm yet to be convinced that CAVORTING is doing anything other than beating up on subpar 3-year-old sprinters, and ARTEMIS AGROTERA hasn't run in a year. The nice thing about this race is that I think I'll get good betting value on whoever I ultimately like, but I'm just not blown away by the quality of the field at all.
#7 TURF MILE: I will always call it the *TURF* Mile simply because I don't understand why nobody else does. Calling it simply THE MILE just seems weird to me, but maybe they do that because the only people that seemingly care about sending good horses to it are the rest of the world. The defending champ KARAKONTIE is back along with a bunch of other top-notch foreigners, but it's hard to get *too* excited about horses you haven't seen all year long. But I'm still plenty excited.
#6 JUVENILE FILLIES: I'm more excited for this race than I have been in a while given how incredible SONGBIRD has looked to date and then the lineage of RACHEL'S VALENTINA and how good she has looked to date. In fact, I'm probably unreasonably excited for this one, but so be it.
#5 DIRT MILE: A lot of serious horse racing people seem to like to disparage the Dirt Mile as being unworthy of Breeders' Cup designation. But these same people love the Met Mile. Go figure. Anyway, we'll wait to see exactly who ends up here given that some of the bigger name horses are cross-entered, but while LIAM'S MAP will be strongly favored to be the next GOLDENCENTS here, horses like VALID and MR Z and BRADESTER are likely to make him work early, so TAPITURE/RED VINE/BARBADOS could be interesting late. Should be a fun one.
#4 TURF: Most of this ranking is based on seeing what GOLDEN HORN can do. And then there's THE PIZZA MAN, one of the all-around coolest horses in training, so those two alone sort of almost make up for the absence of FLINTSHIRE, who chose to go to Japan instead of coming back to the Breeders' Cup. A lot of the other American horses are your run of the mill Saturday Grade 1 turf stake types, but they're all hard-trying types you have to respect.
#3 DISTAFF: I'm really glad BEHOLDER is running in the Classic for a lot of reasons, but the Distaff benefits from it almost as much as the Classic. With BEHOLDER, the Distaff is essentially a walkover. Without her, there are probably 10 horses with a very reasonable chance of winning. I see a lot of very good horses, but no great horses (UNTAPABLE can't be called great at this point, sorry). The pace scenario will be interesting. Can't wait.
#2 SPRINT: This is American racing, so the Sprint is always super-competitive and intriguing. PRIVATE ZONE running here and not the Dirt Mile seems like a mistake to me, but alas, we'll see how things go for him against the rest of the top-notch speed signed on. I'm really interested to see what happens with RUNHAPPY. Other than his ruinous start in the one-mile LeComte, he has repeatedly impressed the hell out of me, and so far his sprint efforts have stamped him as one of the most incredible speed horses I've ever seen. Even just those two facing off would be exciting, so I can't wait to see what happens with all the rest.
#1 CLASSIC: Well, duh. This is simply a stupendous running of the Classic. You've got the boy vs. girl AMERICAN PHAROAH-BEHOLDER story line, and that alone would make this race absolutely awesome. But then you toss in GLENEAGLES, a superlative miler in Europe. Stout closers like TONALIST and HONOR CODE. Great 3-year-olds in FROSTED and KEEN ICE. And, finally, a lightly-raced 4-year-old in SMOOTH ROLLER who could be the most talented horse in the field somehow. (I'm not mentioning EFFINEX and HARD ACES for a reason, although it's worth noting that EFFINEX beat TONALIST at this distance in their last try on a fast track!) Anyway, I have a million words to come on this race, but I'll tease it by saying that I see the winner coming from off the pace ...
All in all, I'd say I'm truly *excited* for six races, *looking forward* to three, and then sort of just *along for the ride* with the other four. Saturday is of course the best day with nine races of top-tier competition, but Friday notches two of the top five despite only having four races (unfortunately, it also has the bottom two). That's all for now -- volumes more on the way in the next few days!
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