Loss helps Bacio become favorite for BC Turf Sprint

Funny how a loss, the only one in Bacio’s six past performances, has played a small role in the 3-year-old colt being favored to win the Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint next Saturday.

It was not a moral victory or an important lesson learned. Nothing like that. It simply was a matter of meeting the conditions for a pivotal victory in the most storied meet in Europe.

“Fortunately we were eligible for that race, because he wasn’t up to stakes caliber yet,” trainer Wesley Ward said Thursday.

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The end of Bacio’s buildup for next weekend at Keeneland actually was an Aug. 21 win in the Group 1 Nunthorpe Stakes at York, one of the biggest sprints of the England summer. Two months earlier he led the whole way to beat 26 other horses in the Palace of Holyroodhouse Stakes at Royal Ascot.

Not only was that Ward’s 13th career victory at the royal meeting, it ended a five-year gap from his last one. The five-furlong handicap was open to horses who have a maximum British Racing Authority rating of 105. If Bacio had won the Speakeasy Stakes in his turf debut last October at Santa Anita, his rating probably would have been more than 105.

“We may not have been eligible, because then he would have been a stakes horse,” Ward told Horse Racing Nation’s Ron Flatter Racing Pod. “All he’d done was broken his maiden and (win two allowance) races. That’s what kept his rating over in Europe down low, so we were eligible for the Holyroodhouse, to the restrictions of his English rating.”

Ward thought the Maclean’s Music colt out of Kantharos mare Katie’s Kiss was primed to do well in England. Nevertheless, he, too, was impressed with Bacio’s 3 3/4-length gate-to-wire triumph that was virtually no contest.

“He was training so good going into that race, I had a lot of confidence that he was going to be a very good horse. And he was,” Ward said. “That’s where he showed his true ‘wow, we’ve got something here.’ That’s when we came back, and I spoke with the owners and tried to take on Group 1 company. We did, and he won, and he’s proven that he’s a fantastic horse.”

Bacio succeeded in the Nunthorpe where Ward had failed with earlier stable stars Acapulco, Lady Aurelia and Golden Pal. He drew away in the final furlong of that five-furlong dash to finish first by 1 1/4 lengths in a field of 18.

“Even before the gate (opened), he was trying to get ahead of the other guys,” said  jockey Juan Hernández, who spoke to Racing Post before he memorably ran in his jockey gear to a board a helicopter for London and a flight to Los Angeles to ride the next day at Del Mar. “When the gate opened, he was all fire.”

Ward did not make that trip to England. He wanted to honor a commitment to be at the Longacres Mile in his native state of Washington, so he left it to daughter-in-law Caitlin Ward, assistant trainer Blake Heap and longtime groom José Reveles to look after Bacio at York.

“The majority of summers in my life growing up, I was at Longacres, now a defunct track that went out of business there in 1992,” Ward said. “The most coveted race up there is the Longacres Mile. That race was on a Sunday, and (the Nunthorpe) was on a Friday. For me to fly from Kentucky, I could only really choose one, and I had a really good horse named Touchy at the time going into the (Longacres Mile) a heavy favorite. I thought it would be a little bit of a boost for Washington racing that needs a little help.”

Touchy crossed first that afternoon at Emerald Downs, but he was disqualified for interference and demoted to second place. It was not the punctuation mark Ward wanted on what began as a big weekend, but he still could bask in Bacio’s triumph.

Ward spoke of taking Bacio to Australia for the Black Caviar Lightning Stakes (G1) in February, but Saturday offers more than just a 5 1/2-furlong prep race for the colt owned by MyRacehorse, breeder Torie Gladwell, Deja Blu Stable, Jacob Shockley, Josh Messenger, Valerie Dailey and Joshua Hanna. Bacio was carrying 3-2 odds in Great Britain on Friday morning for next week’s $1 million Turf Sprint. Ward knows it will present the biggest challenge yet for the chestnut colt.

“These sprint races are always tough,” Ward said. “It is the Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint. We’re not in the Palace of Holyrood. It’s my home track, which bodes well for us. Anytime you have the home-team advantage in any sport, especially horse racing, you have to think that that will help us. Being the favorite like this, you’re kind of under the gun to make sure everything goes well, but this particular guy couldn’t be feeling any better.”

Bacio has made six starts on six tracks starting with a debut win on the Monmouth Park dirt last summer with now-retired jockey Frankie Dettori. Hernández has ridden all the turf starts since at Santa Anita, Del Mar, Churchill Downs and the two in England.

Curiously, Bacio never has raced at Keeneland.

“He just wasn’t ready last year in the spring,” Ward said. “Then this spring he just wasn’t quite ready, so he kind of came to hand a little at the end of (the April meet at) Keeneland. There wasn’t a race until the first week at Churchill.”

Ward has won six times in the Breeders’ Cup, most notably with Golden Pal in the 2020 Juvenile Turf Sprint at Keeneland and the 2021 Turf Sprint at Del Mar. He also won with Hootenanny, Judy the Beauty, Four Wheel Drive and Twilight Gleaming.

Considering his front-running style, can a case be made that Bacio is the fastest horse Ward has had?

“He’s certainly one of the quickest,” he said. “When they leave the last, he’s fast. When he stands in the gate, he’s anticipating (the start), and there’s usually no mistakes with him in there. He’s watching that gate, and when it opens, he knows his job. He’s gone.”

Even though the Nunthorpe win came on soft ground, Ward hopes for firm going next Saturday. The Keeneland turf has been chopped up during the current fall meet, but the rail has been set at 30 feet this week to save the inside for the two days of championship races next week.

“Fortunately we’ve got a lot of sunshine here going into this Breeders’ Cup,” Ward said. “I would believe it’s going to be fast and firm. Based on how they were kind of not getting a hold of it, I kind of think that Keeneland will back off the water truck and just let it be fast and firm for the Breeders’ Cup, which should bode well for us also.”