Flatter: We interrupt this cloud for a Breeders’ Cup silver lining
Arcadia, Calif.
As racing fans gather by the thousands at Santa Anita this weekend, NBC Sports will focus the rest of the nation’s attention on a competitor who is knee-deep in cheating accusations with the threat of administrative punishment hanging like an ominous cloud overhead.
That will be when it switches from racing to cover the Michigan Wolverines.
See what I did there?
While college football deals with the great Ann Arbor sign-stealing scandal, the sport of kings tightens its focus on the Great Race Place for the first Breeders’ Cup to be conducted under the aegis of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority’s medication rules.
It has not been the integrity that has drawn attention this week as much as the safety. The deaths of Practical Move and Geaux Rocket Ride made the news in a way that racing wanted about as much as the Big Ten Conference was eager to have Jim Harbaugh in its spotlight for all the wrong reasons.
Yet that game will go on Saturday night at 7 Eastern, 6 Central time, on most of these NBC stations. It will be another celebration of football just as it is pretty much four days a week every week in the fall. So it will be, too, for our game with the 14 Breeders’ Cup races Friday and Saturday, right up to and even through the kickoff at the big house.
Because of NBC’s football commitment, the $6 million Classic that is America’s richest race will not be the last of the Breeders’ Cup championships this year. And I am loathe to call them championships, especially since those really are not decided until the Eclipse Award votes are revealed in January.
Whither the poor Classic. It will not be the closing act Saturday night, and it will not star Flightline or Zenyatta or Tiznow or Cigar. It feels this year like getting an invitation to go to a concert at some unknown venue to see The Weeknd only to find out it actually was some unknown who was playing at a concert this weekend.
Belmont Stakes winner Arcangelo was the futures favorite in the Classic before he was withdrawn Tuesday with that cranky heel. That seemed unfortunately appropriate in a year when Forte, the top Kentucky Derby betting choice, was scratched on race day. Since it still is 2023 for another couple months, the eventual winner of the Derby had to be taken out of the Breeders’ Cup, because fate says that is what has to happen this year.
With Preakness victor National Treasure pointed to the Dirt Mile, I posited the question, when was the last time the Breeders’ Cup Classic did not have any of the winners of that year’s springtime classics? Then I remembered when Justify won them all in 2018 and did not race again. There went any thought that this was unprecedented.
Looking back on that Classic from five years ago, it was not only Justify’s absence that watered the wine. The previous year’s top juvenile Good Magic was retired a month after he flopped in the Travers and was found to have a high white count in his blood. Diversify, another Grade 1 winner who qualified via the Whitney, was out after he lost weight and stopped training well.
Even without a great story to build on going into that Classic, the race provided one when Accelerate won it. Suddenly we had a four-time winner of Grade 1 races that were 1 1/4 miles each, all in the same 5-year-old season. That would have been worthy of a horse-of-the-year trophy if not for Justify’s Triple Crown. The Hronis brothers and trainer John Sadler just had to wait for Flightline’s star to rise four years later.
Come what may, the Breeders’ Cup Classic of 2023 will produce a good story. So will the race before it. Mostahdaf vs. Auguste Rodin in the Turf has to be the envy of fans in Europe who have to stay up until nearly midnight to see it.
There will be others good stories, too. Maybe not 14, but something always happens to make the Breeders’ Cup memorable, hopefully in a positive way.
After what happened with Geaux Rocket Ride and Practical Move, there will be collectively quiet breath-holding at Santa Anita between now and about 8:05 p.m. EDT, when Elite Power’s bid to clinch a second straight championship will put the Sprint and, with it, the Breeders’ Cup to bed.
The drive-by media of Los Angeles has mentioned the horse deaths, but it has not risen to the point of the obsession it became on local news in 2019 when dozens of racehorses died at Santa Anita. In an area that still stops to watch helicopter coverage of police chases, even legitimate, bad-news stories can be twisted into shiny objects faster than it takes Andy Cohen to watch what happens live.
If Cody’s Wish wins another Dirt Mile for his teenage inspiration Cody Dorman, that moment will be the positive that we all covet, even though it will happen before noon local time Saturday. Why that race was not made part of the NBC show starting an hour later deserves some sort of explanation that hopefully does not end with been there, done that.
If Japan were to win again more than once the way it did two years ago at Del Mar, that story will be worth the time to tell. Ushba Tesoro and Songline could give us all more reasons to envy the track experience at their home courses, which showcase the best and most loyal racing fans in the world.
At the risk of being sanguine in the face of racing’s real problems, maybe the Breeders’ Cup was meant to take us away from them, even if only for a minute or two 14 times in the next two days.
So as not to gild that lily, there is something to be remembered in the very name of the event. Underscore the word breeders. They not only are the benefactors of this grand idea that was hatched four decades ago, they are the beneficiaries, too.
The object of this game is to have horses earn their way to pedestals. Those pedestals are the breeding farms that produce this game’s greatest stars and then take them away just before we really get to know them. That is truer now more than ever.
Like I said, we should enjoy this two-day racing bacchanal while we can. We can get back to real life Sunday. Or maybe when the Wolverines kick off against Purdue.