Flatter: Presenting 5 potential new hosts for the Breeders’ Cup

As I put off packing until the last minute for next week’s trip to San Diego, I already can hear announcer Larry Collmus making his introduction to the well-heeled crowd at Del Mar.

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the 41st annual Breeders’ Cup. Now please rise and remove your hats for the assembling of your hotel and food bills.”

Ah, San Diego. Maybe that should say $an Diego. A visit to the annually self-anointed world championships comes with some serious sticker shock, something we get to enjoy this year and next at the junction of turf and surf.

Somewhere up there, ol’ John Gaines is watching. For you youngsters out there under 50, he of the blue blood was the last person to unite the horse-racing industry. That was when he wrestled everyone onto the same page to foal the Breeders’ Cup in 1984.

Gaines’s original idea was to rotate the big day, just the one back then, to constituent racecourses across North America. Six different tracks hosted the first seven. Two different countries staged the first 13.

That all changed the year the bettors’ bacchanal expanded from one day to two on a sodden visit to Monmouth Park for the Curlin coronation in 2007. Coincidentally, that was the last time the Breeders’ Cup was run outside California or Kentucky. The last six years of a four-decade history comprising 12 venues have turned into a three-track rotation between Keeneland, Santa Anita and Del Mar.

“I think they’re still trying to rotate it everywhere,” training legend D. Wayne Lukas said this week. “But the Breeders’ Cup in their greed is not making it very attractive for a track to have it, as I understand. Not every racetrack is jumping at the opportunity to have it. They probably are going to have to adjust that in order to get to the point where somebody will want it.”

The hushed negotiations over the divvying of every cent from takeout to taxes merely confirm what Lukas said and reconfirm the old Don Ohlmeyer line to Tony Kornheiser. “The answer to all your questions is money.”

Nevertheless, we can dare to dream. Let’s say the quaint table for three can be expanded to a party of eight. The inspiration is not easy. Of the first 12 tracks to host the Breeders’ Cup, we have lost Hollywood Park and Arlington. Aqueduct is soon to follow. Gulfstream Park has been miniaturized. Churchill Downs is under construction 11 months a year with turf that still shows up on the injured list as questionable.

We are getting Belmont Park back, perhaps as soon as the 2026 Breeders’ Cup, but a jury of our peers is still out on how that is going to be as a fan experience.

With the help of some diphenhydramine that hopefully is not on some federal regulator’s no-no list for equine or human consumption, here are five venues that I propose to add to the current trio of host sites for the Breeders’ Cup.

1. Fair Grounds. While Churchill Downs the racetrack continues to undergo the rebuilding of the grandstand and braces for a massive infield project, Churchill Downs the corporation could strut its stuff in New Orleans. It was my favorite city to cover Super Bowls. Why not transfer that experience to horseplayers? There is no shortage of good hotels and food, and the weather should be all right. There is the small matter of going to a racetrack that never has hosted a Grade 1 race. Add some TLC and the same type of temporary stands and marquees that work at Keeneland, and this could be doable.

2. Saratoga. There are two huge concerns here. Hotels and weather. The New York Racing Association successfully addressed the first concern when it hosted a wildly successful Belmont Stakes week this year. For those who cannot get a room walking distance from the track, that drive from Albany, N.Y., to the Spa is no more gruesome that the time someone might spend in Southern California traffic coming and going from Santa Anita. Now what to do about the threat of cold. It does drop into the 30s these days in upstate New York. Someone find me an agronomist to advise on the turf while I look for space heaters for the clubhouse.

3. Monmouth Park. The 2007 regatta is the lasting memory of the only Breeders’ Cup visit to the Jersey Shore. What many do not remember, however, was how balmy a day it was when the draw took place that week. Something else forgotten was how well the event was organized and how many people actually showed up for it despite the antediluvian conditions. With management there being bullish on racing, it might be worth trying again there. That dice roll certainly would be in a nicer setting at Monmouth than any crap shoot in seedy Atlantic City.

4. Gulfstream Park. As the old Dr. Frasier Crane and his good, original writers would say, please roll those eyes back into the forward position. Hotels, check. Weather, check. A rebuilding of the original grandstand? Even that is a dream too far. But those temporary stands and marquees that work at Keeneland that I already have committed to Fair Grounds could be hauled here. Revitalizing a turf course that gets beaten throughout the year more than the Miami Marlins might take some doing, but it is only three weeks before the traditional winter meet starts. Of the major U.S. racing colonies, New York and Florida are the two biggest that are not in the Breeders’ Cup rotation. That really ought to be changed.

5. Japan. Whoa, what? If the NFL can make noise about putting the Super Bowl in London, then allow me please to be a copycat. Some sugar daddy or mommy either is going to have to write an enormous check to get all the good U.S. horses over there one year, or we merely can accept that the balance of power may be shifting across the Pacific anyway. Maybe this is just my excuse to float the idea and hope a magic carpet finally will carry me to a big Thoroughbred event in a country that has the most passionate racing fans on the planet. Let’s see how many of the 19 horses who have made the flight from Japan for the 2024 Breeders’ Cup win next week.

Like Lukas said, there is the legitimate question of what the Breeders’ Cup will do financially for these racetracks in exchange for taking advantage of squatters’ rights to run 14 races.

I think I hear the alarm going off. Dream time is over. Time to find out if next week’s breakfast really will be free.

Ron Flatter’s column appears Friday mornings at Horse Racing Nation. Comments below and at RonFlatterRacingPod@gmail.com are welcomed, encouraged and may be used in the feedback segment of the Ron Flatter Racing Pod, which also is posted every Friday. The new episode includes plenty of feedback from last week’s column about social-media reaction to jockey Luan Machado’s finish-line mistake at Keeneland.