Breeders' Cup 2017: Matt Brocklebank answers the big questions ahead of the Thoroughbred World Championships in Del Mar
Can James Garfield live up to being named after the 20th President? Where’s the value in the Classic? Matt Brocklebank dissects all the big issues ahead of #BC17.
Can Classic champ Arrogate rediscover his form?
The case for Arrogate becoming the second dual Classic winner in Breeders’ Cup history, following in the hoofprints of Tiznow who did the Churchill-Belmont double at the turn of the millennium, is really quite simple.
He was a champion three-year-old in his maiden season, overhauled California Chrome in a Classic for the ages 12 months ago, before advertising the Big A brand across the globe with a brilliant victory in the Dubai World Cup.
He’s trained by the best of the best America has to offer, he’s owned by one of the biggest operations going and he’s ridden by the most prolific Breeders’ Cup jockey in the sensationally fit 52-year-old Mike Smith.
But the more unforgiving form students among you may already have noticed the catch – not only is Arrogate lining up on the back of two summer defeats, but they both came at Del Mar.
His form figures at the picturesque, seaside track that stages the 'World Championships' of thoroughbred racing for the very first time this year read 4, 2.
Elsewhere, in chronological order, make that 3, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1.
Last year’s hectic campaign took something out of Arrogate, by Bob Baffert's own admission, but is that massive engine still intact? And can the trainer get him to peak again for the race of his life?
Baffert has presumably known for some time now that this horse is to enter the Juddmonte Farms stud roster in Lexington in 2018, where the finest broodmares around await his company, and the trainer looks to have been working back from November 4 since his champion crossed the line at Meydan.
Would he have traded defeat in the San Diego Handicap and Pacific Classic for victory in the big one right back at the start of the year? You can bet your life he would, but that alone shouldn’t be enough to convince anyone beyond all reasonable doubt that Arrogate can steal the show all over again.
Is this year’s $6million Classic a two-horse race?
Half of the last 10 Classics have been won by three-year-olds, including the three most recent renewals.
The younger generation receive 4lb in weight, clearly have the greater scope for improvement and are usually razor-sharp in terms of fitness towards the end of a busy schedule.
And yet the two at the top of the betting this year are both aged four.
Arrogate is considered by some knowledgeable US scribes as being among the greatest 10-furlong dirt horses of all time, and then there’s east coaster Gun Runner, who has truly blossomed only this year under the guidance of Steve Asmussen. His strike-rate in G1 company in 2016 was 1-5, whereas this term he’s tagged 3-3 since following home his nemesis out in the Emirates.
That wasn’t the first time he’d got a good sight of the rear end of Arrogate as he was third in last season’s Travers before the pair went their separate ways at Santa Anita, Gun Runner managing only second to Tamarkuz in the Dirt Mile, as Arrogate and California Chrome set about bringing the house down in the Classic.
The pair are clear on the figures, there’s no disputing that, but one has to wonder if Gun Runner smashing up relatively moderate top-class fields over nine furlongs, and all the furore surrounding Arrogate's well-being, could result in one or two being wrongly overlooked.
The one bleeping away at the edge of the radar at this stage is one of Arrogate’s four pre-entered stablemates West Coast, who has tracked a similar path to the Big A given he was unraced at two and has made massive progress as a three-year-old.
His sire Flatter was no champion but has proved to be useful at stud in the States, while the dam, Caressing, won the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies in 2000.
West Coast has gone from Maiden winner in May, to Stakes winner in June, to Grade Three winner in July, to Grade One winner in August and September.
Going back to my original point about the three-year-olds dominating in this race lately – it’s probably now worth highlighting all three were trained by Baffert.
A two-horse race? Let’s hope not.
Is Ulysses the European flag-bearer?
Looking at what Ulysses has achieved this term gives the impression that last year’s Breeders’ Cup experience really put hairs on his chest.
Kept relatively low key after rather blowing his top in the Derby, the BC Turf must have been pretty painful viewing for Sir Michael Stoute given he’d clearly targeted the race in which to pitch Ulysses back into the deep end.
In the event, Highland Reel was gifted the softest of leads and made all, Ulysses unable to make up the ground quick enough from a difficult position having not broken brilliantly for Frankie Dettori.
Roll on 12 months and confidence should be sky-high again, the four-year-old taking his form to a new level in 2017 with victories in the Coral-Eclipse and Juddmonte International during a textbook 'older Stoute horse' campaign.
Add to that highly creditable placed efforts behind Enable in the King George at Ascot and the Arc de Triomphe at Chantilly and you get a crystal clear picture that the once-headstrong Ulysses is now about as dependable as they come.
The biggie in the red column for him is that he has contested four Group Ones over the Turf trip of a mile and a half, and won none of them.
He’s got Group Three honours at the distance and Del Mar’s lightning-quick turf course should play to his strengths, namely his high cruising speed and demonic turn of foot. But the trip is an obvious potential negative that should not be written off entirely.
History shows the Turf is where the Europeans are likely to be at their strongest in terms of battling at the bar with the locals. Dettori and Ryan Moore have four wins apiece, while Stoute landed it twice with Conduit and Aidan O’Brien is the leading all-time trainer in the race with six victories, including the last two.
So while Ulysses may be the poster-boy from the 36-strong list of long haul ‘shippers’, he's certainly not alone when it comes to Euros heading to #BC17 with leading claims of bringing back a sizeable piece of the loot.
Why is Lady Aurelia such a short price to reverse York form with Marsha?
A very reasonable question on the face of it and many British onlookers will be rooting for Marsha here, for a multitude of reasons.
They include the fact she’s owned by Elite Racing Club, and that she’s trained by one of Newmarket’s shrewdest operators and proudest raconteurs in Sir Mark Prescott. He’s done just about everything the sport has to offer and yet will be saddling his first Breeders’ Cup runner in the Turf Sprint this year.
Marsha’s jockey Luke Morris, a particularly likeable soul with a no-nonsense style of riding one suspects will be extremely well suited to America, will also be making a belated debut at the meeting.
But they don’t dish out $1million Breeders’ Cup races for sentimental purposes and the cold, hard evidence against Marsha being able to repeat her Nunthorpe victory over Lady Aurelia at Del Mar stacks up.
Twice they’ve met, and it currently stands at one apiece, the Prescott filly’s York equaliser cancelling out LA’s smooth King’s Stand success.
The big deal – and possibly deal-breaker as far as I'm concerned - here in Del Mar is going to be the ground. The hot, humid weather of South California will make the turf track ride super-fast and though Marsha has won on ‘Good to Firm’ a couple of times now, such a description of Newmarket’s Rowley Mile course back in May could in reality be some way off what we're going to encounter on the outskirts of San Diego.
It was certainly more akin to west coast conditions when Wes Ward’s star powered to victory at Royal Ascot in the peak of summer, compared to their memorable head-bobber at the Ebor Festival at least.
It’s the kind of ground Lady Aurelia will have been schooled on ever since she was broken in. She’s right at home on the quick going, while "the fastest horse" Ward has ever trained is also right at home winging her way to victory around two bends.
Marsha has bend-running experience of her own at Catterick and Dundalk from earlier in her career but Prescott was happy to admit she "didn't quite hug the rails as I'd have liked" in a recent Chelmsford spin and, like her connections, it could all feel a little alien out here.
The odds are against her, for sure, but wouldn’t that make victory for this freakishly tall and talented sprinter all the more satisfying?
Where is history-making Aidan O’Brien going to be best represented?
We've already touched upon returning Turf champion Highland Reel who lines up on the back of a perfectly acceptable third to runaway three-year-old winner Cracksman on unsuitably soft ground in the QIPCO Champion Stakes at Ascot.
Despite being drawn out wide last year, he was able to saunter across to lead and after setting a pedestrian pace of 24.83sec for the opening quarter-mile, the six-time Group One winner was inevitably always in command.
He's had another good year and still looks capable of matching that effort from last November. He'll be dangerous once more if dictating matters but surely the others will be wise to the move.
O'Brien has pre-entered 14 possible contenders for Del Mar, including the fascinating prospect of Churchill tackling the Classic, but a quick scan of the antepost markets reveals no great shocks in that O'Brien is probably going to be strongest in the two-year-old races on turf.
Clemmie is the team's top female prospect for 2018 and won’t be travelling, but Happily is a dual scorer at the highest level already and September was an unlucky loser for many in the Fillies’ Mile.
As for the colts, U S Navy Flag, Nelson and Mendelssohn look like spearheading a potent attack on the Juvenile Turf.
But seven of O'Brien's previous Breeders' Cup winners have been older horses and in keeping with the ground-breaking season he's enjoying, Rhododendron looks the ace in the pack in the Filly & Mare Turf – a race that has so far eluded him since its inception in 1999.
It would be a fitting victory, too, being the only Breeders' Cup race Bobby Frankel managed to win on more than one occasion.
Is it all about the likely lads again, then?
With the thick end of $30million of prize money on the table across the weekend’s sport, there just isn't a huge amount of room for the little guy at the Breeders' Cup.
Take last year's meeting – O’Brien and Stoute were the European trainers to strike gold, with Bob Baffert taking his overall career BC tally to 14 with a brace. Bill Mott also features on the top trainers list and he claimed his 10th success through Tourist in the Mile.
Richard Mandella, Chad Brown and Mark Casse are all household names in the States who delivered on their biggest stage of all 12 months ago, so you can't go too far wrong focusing your attention on the names up in lights on the billboards.
But rags-to-riches stories can certainly happen at this meeting and if racing at the scene of Seabiscuit's famous match with Ligaroti 125 miles down the road from Hollywood doesn’t get the creative juices flowing, then very little will.
The colourful Jorge Navarro is a man to have made significant waves over the past couple of years, including hitting the headlines for the wrong reasons (DRF), and his Dirt Mile contender Sharp Azteca, a $35,000 yearling, has now passed $1million in earnings.
Former jockey Mick Ruis has some considerable backing and will be hopeful sensational two-year-old Bolt D'Oro can act as the starting blocks to propel him into the upper echelons, but what about the Brits?
For around 20 quid a month you can be part of the Elite Racing Club and Marsha is an outstanding candidate for them in the Turf Sprint, but the real small-scale eyecatcher is James Garfield in the Juvenile Turf for Newmarket-based trainer George Scott.
OK, his owners Bill and Tim Gredley – of Big Orange fame - don’t queue up at Tesco for ‘yellow sticker hour’, but Scott has only officially been training a couple of years and he’s saddled just 200 runners. His (horses’) career earnings of £300,000 make him a very small fish at this particular fixture across the pond.
A hardy, well-made son of Exceed And Excel, the colt’s balanced action and liking for fast ground could easily see him live up to his father’s name – if not his own.
The dark Knight rises...
"…it'd be a big bonus to win over a mile in America, and no loss if not."
Roger Charlton is the master of self-deprecation and you have to hand it to him the way he's dealt with Decorated Knight this year.
The tough son of Galileo has for some unknown reason never really caught the imagination of the wider racing public and yet he's now bidding for a "bonus" Breeders' Cup victory at the end of a stellar season in which he's already won three times at the highest level.
That's the same number of career Group One victories as Cracksman and Ulysses combined.
Masterful placement and horse-management has made all that possible while Charlton’s deft way with words in pre and post-race interviews has meant Decorated Knight hasn’t carried any hype along with him.
In the kindest possible sense, it appears the same Kansas City Shuffle is at work once more with the Beckhampton handler oh so cool on the chances of his current stable star, while clearly identifying a drop in trip for the Mile as his most likely route to that bonus top-class triumph before he's retired to stud.
We all like to think that we learn from our mistakes, but I hope it's a reasonable assumption to suggest Charlton is most likely drawing upon his experiences with Time Test, who rocked up in Keeneland a couple of years ago with a tall reputation, and a small Starting Price.
He was never a factor under Ryan Moore as Tepin took the Mile spoils but his trainer evidently came away from Lexington with more than just a few holiday snaps.
I haven’t the faintest idea if Charlton is a fan of jazz – or the highly under-rated film Lucky Number Slevin for that matter – but what’s plainly obvious is that he's got this business down to a tee.
'It’s a blindfold kick back type of a game,
Called the Kansas City Shuffle,
Whereas you look left and they fall right,
Into the Kansas City Shuffle…'