We are a week away from the biggest weekend in racing which will take place on November 4th and 5th at Santa Anita with the Breeder’s Cup Championships. The year’s top performers will be taking a shot at a record $28 million in purses over 13 races with many horses competing for year-end honors as well. The festivities will culminate with the $6 million Breeder’s Cup Classic on Saturday which will be run at 1-1/4 mile over the dirt course.
The “win and you’re in” series of races has placed several of the contenders into the Breeder’s Cup Classic well in advance of the race date which has forced trainers and owners into the dilemma of running prep races or just training up to the race. While Bob Baffert ran BC Classic contender Hoppertunity in an easy spot 2 weeks ago in the Jockey Club Gold Cup, he has chosen to follow a different path with Travers winner Arrogate. Arrogate’s path will mirror what Baffert successfully did with American Pharoah in 2015, when Pharoah capped off his epic career with a BC Classic victory. Like Pharoah, Arrogate will go from his run in the Travers back in August straight to the Classic with only morning workouts in between.
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The prep races versus morning workouts strategies adds another wrinkle when handicapping the Classic. Normally when I start handicapping a race I will discount horses who have had long layoffs with only workouts leading up to the race. The usual comment about these horses is that they need a tightener to get into better condition. This is not the case when dealing with the superior stock of the Breeder’s Cup caliber horses.
The morning workouts are difficult to judge strictly off of the stopwatch. Workouts without the gate and without an official finish line clock are timed by hand which creates a variance among different clockers. Arrogate’s most recent 6 furlong workout with Rafael Bejarano aboard was timed at 1:10.95 by the Daily Racing Form, but came in at 1:11.20 according to Equibase. It was reported that Arrogate then continued his galloped out for a full mile but his 7 furlong and 1 mile times will go unpublished (1:24 for 7f and 1:37.10 for the mile according to Mike Welsch of DRF).
Evaluating the workouts of championship caliber horses is even tougher when you hear what the trainers have to say afterwards. “Trainer-speak” regarding workouts is another category of sports clichés that tells us almost nothing. Horses are usually said to have worked out exactly the way the trainers envisioned and always seem to gallop out well. If the workout varies from the plan at all, the trainer will accentuate the positive like Bob Baffert did after Arrogate’s 6f work…”He went out a little quick today but I wanted him closer to the other horses.”
And what about the horses who are not training at Santa Anita? BC Classic 7-5 morning line favorite California Chrome last ran in Santa Anita’s Awesome Again Stakes on October 1st but has since been training at Los Alamitos. Chrome’s times over the Los Alamitos track will not be directly comparable to other horses’ times at Santa Anita. In addition, Chrome’s training schedule will be slightly altered due to the forecast of rain. Trainer Art Sherman does not want Chrome working over a sealed track so his Saturday workout will be moved up to Thursday, and Chrome will then take a van ride to Santa Anita where he will be breezed 3/8s through the stretch just days before the big race.
For an objective account of the morning activities, Breeder’s Cup works are available for viewing online at @WatchXBTV or on the TVG Youtube playlist, or you can do what I do and follow Jay Privman of the Daily Racing Form. Jay covers all of the BC horses with great comments about the company they kept on the track, how they galloped out and any other things of note that will not be attached to the time printed in the past performances.
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The bottom line is that I have been following the workouts leading up to Breeder’s Cup weekend strictly looking for the rare outliers on the negative side. All of the horses running in the Classic have talent and there is enough past performance data to prove it. A great morning work just proves that the horse is sound and in good condition, but for horses running in the BC Classic I already assumed that. If horses like California Chrome and Arrogate run well in the mornings it’s because they are great horses who always run well, not because they are making big moves forward. My handicapping will concentrate on the racing information in their past performances and not on the hype surrounding their morning works. There is no Breeder’s Cup Classic horse who will garner a bet from me strictly off of a stellar workout.
