Top 10 Breeders' Cup Classics - With Video
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The Breeders' Cup Classic is the culmination of a year's excellence in horse racing. Over its
history, the Classic has been the scene of some of racing's most dramatic finishes and crowned
Horses of the Year. Here are the 10 best editions.
Honorable Mention:
2004 - Ghostzapper
Legendary trainer Bobby Frankel had only won his first Breeders' Cup race in 2000 after years of near-misses. In 2004, his lightly-raced speedball tore up the track at Lone Star Park, becoming the fastest Classic winner ever and giving Frankel his only Classic win.
10. 1997 - Skip Away
9. 1995 - Cigar
Legendary trainer Bobby Frankel had only won his first Breeders' Cup race in 2000 after years of near-misses. In 2004, his lightly-raced speedball tore up the track at Lone Star Park, becoming the fastest Classic winner ever and giving Frankel his only Classic win.
10. 1997 - Skip Away
The grey had the high-stepping action of a carousel horse, and in the 1997 edition at Hollywood
Park, he made the Classic look like a merry-go-round with a near wire-to-wire win, in stakes
record time.
9. 1995 - Cigar
Cigar's Classic was the 12th victory in his incredible 16-win streak, a feat unprecedented at the
time. In the dramatic stretch run, Tom Durkin said the words by which Cigar is still known -
incomparable, invincable, unbeatable.
8. 2009 - Zenyatta
She was unbeaten in her career and even had a Breeders' Cup Ladies' Classic on her resume
already. But Zenyatta's come-from-the-clouds victory in the 2009 Classic at Santa Anita cemented
her status on the roster of legends.
7. 1984 - Wild Again
The inaugural Classic featured a Preakness winner and the son of a Triple Crown winner, but it
was a smallish dark bay horse who stole the show, in a gritty stretch run that put the Breeders'
Cup on the map at Hollywood Park.
6. 2007 - Curlin
The 2007 Triple Crown season ranks among the top of all time - Street Sense, Hard Spun, Rags to
Riches and Curlin all traded blows in the classics and made history in their own unique ways. But
it all came down to the Classic, on a sloppy Monmouth strip where Curlin asserted his dominance.
5. 1998 - Awesome Again
Considered by many to be the deepest Classic field ever assembled, the 1998 edition featured Skip
Away, Silver Charm, Swain, Touch Gold, Victory Gallop and Coronado's Quest. Awesome Again blew
them all away in a wild stretch run at Churchill Downs.
4. 1987 - Ferdinand
A memorable battle of Kentucky Derby winners unfolded at Hollywood Park as Ferdinand and Alysheba
duked it out to the line. The winner, by a whisker, was Ferdinand.
3. 1989 - Sunday Silence
The rivalry of the ages, Sunday Silence and Easy Goer, came to a climax in the Breeders' Cup
Classic. Easy Goer's home track, Belmont, played host, but it was Sunday Silence who endeavored
to the victory and put to rest the question of which colt was superior.
2. 2001 - Tiznow
In the shadow of 9/11, Tiznow held off the drive of the best horse in Europe and "won it for
America", becoming the only dual Breeders' Cup Classic winner.
1. 2010 - Blame
Zenyatta had the entire length of the Churchill Downs homestretch to catch Blame and keep her
perfect record in tact, but for the first time she met an opponent who was up to the task in the
most thrilling race the Breeders' Cup has ever seen.
-- Candice Curtis, with advice from Travis Stone
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