Posted by Matt Bisogno on November 9, 2010 · 10 Comments
Churchill Downs last weekend saw the 2010 renewal of racing’s Breeders Cup festival, spread over fourteen races and two days. It’s not to everyone’s tastes, but it certainly floats my boat, as I get my one chance a year to test my skills at reading US form and assimilating that with European lines. Not easy, but great fun nevertheless!
I’ve learned so much about US racing in the past week from my deep research, and I think I’ve picked up at least a couple of new tricks that can be applied to UK racing to produce some very nice ‘against the crowds’ profits. More of that another day, but today I want to share with you my thoughts on the Breeders Cup races, and on Churchill Downs.
Let’s start with the track as, for the second time in a row, the Breeders Cup will be held at the same track twice in succession. As it was with Santa Anita in 2008 and 2009, so Louisville’s Churchill Downs will again host the Breeders Cup 2011 next November.
So the following track notes may come in handy in a year’s time!
Obviously, there are two courses, the turf and the dirt. I expanded on the theoretical vagaries of these in an earlier post here – Churchill Downs Track Bias – and today I want to add some experience to the academics.
The dirt course, a mile round and outside the turf course, is a traditional US dirt track. This differs from our all weather courses, and from many US so-called poly and synthetic tracks.
Horses with dirt form fared best, and horses with synthetic form – especially Euro horses coming off the all-weather – did poorly. Next year, it will likely pay to follow only horses with proven dirt form despite the allure of others with seemingly better credentials achieved on different surfaces.
The draw was discussed at length in a preview I attended, and it was felt that the inside draw (post position 1) was not a good place to be in the sprints. As it turned out, in the six furlong Breeders Cup Sprint, trap 1 beat traps 4 and 5. So that did for the inside box hoodoo theory!
In truth, the track was pretty fair to all runners over both days, with one notable exception: front runners struggled. Personally, I don’t actually believe this was to do with the track, but rather it was because it is very, very difficult to withstand late rallies from some of the best horses on the planet when you’ve been out in front for so long.
The turf course showed arguably a touch of inside draw bias, with trap one capturing the five furlong sprint, from trap two. The other important things to take from the turf course are the tight turns (think Chester on steroids) and the firmness of the track. It is my opinion that the lawn was good to firm, good in places on Friday – due largely to a drop or three of rain. But on Saturday, with no further precipitation and drying weather (cool and pretty breezy), allied to a notoriously quick draining course, it was rock hard.
Sir Michael Stoute whinged a little bit too much for my tastes (he should have known all about the track there, and almost certainly did), but he was probably right to ultimately pull Workforce (and Dux Scholar) from the races. It is my opinion that he’ll think twice before believe he has some sort of divine power to instruct the ground staff in Louisville to dance to his turf tune.
US turf horses habitually run on rock hard ground and they’re hardly likely to make a race that is already a Euro benefit any easier for the away team.
With the exception of previously unheralded (and, by me, previously lampooned) Dangerous Midge, and of course Goldikova in the Mile, Euro horses underperformed left, right and sidewise. This I think is for a variety of reasons, as follows:
- Over-racing. For many trainers, the Breeders Cup is an afterthought. They race their horses from Spring to Autumn, and then bring them here. Aidan O’Brien is a classic example of this, and I think his star – on both sides of the Atlantic – is on the wane a little. Certainly his nags go off much shorter generally than they deserve to.
It is instructive to note that Freddie Head has targeted the BC Mile for Goldikova all year: no afterthought there. Moreover, Brian Meehan was sending out his second winner in the Turf, as Dangerous Midge followed in the hoofprints of Red Rocks (also at Churchill Downs in 2006). Clearly then, this was the plan for DM too. (How easy this game is with hindsight!)
- The ground. Saturday’s turf course would have been described as ‘firm’ in Britain, and even then only because racecourses refuse to use the ‘hard’ description any more. When was the last time you saw a track described as ‘hard’ in UK? So the raiders weren’t used to that, and probably didn’t cope too well (except DM).
- The pace. Again excepting the pedestrian clip in the Turf, where the first three at the finish were the same as they were a furlong after the start albeit in a slightly different order, the turf races are run quickly. Obviously, we have fast run races here too, but factoring in the need for early ‘tactical’ speed in order to get a position, and the extreme tightness of the curves (with very little camber too), and this was a pretty alien concept for many Euro runners.
I really hope we send turf sprinters for the five furlong race next year, as a true speed horse with fast ground form, early pace and a good draw, could bag that prize. For the other races, I’ll be avoiding O’Brien horses, swerving the BC Turf, and wary in the rest.
