DEL MAR — Thoroughbred racing’s biggest prize is called Horse of the Year, but its winner in 2024 almost certainly will be whoever is best during an 80-minute burst of competition Saturday in the Breeders’ Cup.
“It’s the way it’s supposed to be,” trainer Ken McPeek said this week at Del Mar.
The Horse of the Year contest between the 3-year-old colt Fierceness and McPeek’s 3-year-old filly Thorpedo Anna frames the climatic afternoon of the 41st Breeders’ Cup at Del Mar racetrack.
Todd Pletcher-trained Fierceness, the No. 1 horse in the National Thoroughbred Racing Association’s weekly rankings, can take the clearest path to the Horse of the Year title by beating British-based superstar City of Troy and a dozen others in the $7 million Breeders’ Cup Classic at about 2:41 p.m.
If Fierceness doesn’t win, Thorpedo Anna, queen of the national sophomore fillies division, would become the focus of Horse of the Year voters among racing journalists and executives if she lives up to odds-on favoritism in the $2 million Breeders’ Cup Distaff at about 1:21 p.m.
But if neither Fierceness nor Thorpedo Anna wins, the campaign would get more complicated.
The Classic and Distaff are two of nine Breeders’ Cup races, the first at noon, on a 12-race card starting at 10:05 a.m. Weather handicappers predict a high temperature of 66 degrees and a 13 percent chance of rain at the track barely a quarter-mile from the Pacific Ocean.
Fierceness has the edge over Thorpedo Anna going into the richest day of the U.S. racing year because he beat her by a thrilling head when the filly challenged males in the Travers Stakes at Saratoga in August.
The challenge is harder for Fierceness than for Thorpedo Anna.
Ridden by John Velazquez, Fierceness is the 3-1 second choice on the morning line behind 5-2 City of Troy. Forever Young, the hard-luck third-place finisher in the Kentucky Derby who is one of three horses from Japan in the Classic, is 6-1.
City of Troy, maybe the best horse in the world after winning the Epsom Derby and two other Group 1 races with jockey Ryan Moore on English turf in the spring and summer, would become a legend if he’s able to win the Classic in his first try on American dirt. It would be an achievement for the great Irish trainer Aidan O’Brien, who has won major races all over the globe and has 18 other Breeders’ Cup wins but hasn’t cracked the Classic. It would be the story of the Breeders’ Cup for the rest of the racing world.
City of Troy could be the O’Brien horse to do it because he’s a son of Justify, the 2018 U.S. Triple Crown winner on dirt who stands in Kentucky at Ashford Stud, the American branch of Ireland’s Coolmore Stud. His dam, Together Forever, is a daughter of the turf star Galileo.
“We thought, even before he ever ran at 2, that running him in the Breeders’ Cup Classic was always the dream,” O’Brien said this week at Del Mar. “That was the dream about getting (sire) Justify originally.”
Horse-watchers noted that City of Troy perspired a lot in training runs at Del Mar early in the week. That could be a sign of stress. O’Brien put a positive spin on it.
“Sweating never bothers me, and I would always rather see them sweating than not, because usually if they’re sweating, they’re up for it, rather than coming here floating around,” O’Brien said. “The Classic is going to be ferocious, and he’s going to have to be on his game. If he’s around here laid-back, you get wiped out. I’d rather him be a little bit edgy and a bit ready.”
City of Troy will have to handle the faster early pace of U.S. main-track races, and handle having dirt kicked back in his face if he isn’t among the early leaders.
“There’s so many things that have to go right for him. He has to jump (from the starting gate), he has to settle into the pace, he has to adapt to the dirt,” O’Brien said. “There’s so many variables we just can’t control. We’ve done our best, we think. Until another stone comes that we should have looked under.”
Even if City of Troy proved himself the best horse on the planet, he’d be unlikely to win the North American Horse of the Year vote because he’d have raced here only once.
There’s plenty of skepticism just about his chances in this race.
Mike Repole, breeder and owner of Fierceness, joked about City of Troy: “I think people think the race is on turf, that’s why they made him favorite. I know it’s on dirt. I just checked again.”
Said McPeek: “He’s got his work cut out. That’s a tough transition, from a complete turf career to a dirt race. I think we’re going to find out if the influence in his pedigree is Justify or Galileo. If he were to do it, it certainly would prove his greatness.”
To McPeek, a Thorpedo Anna victory under Brian Hernandez Jr. as a 4-5 morning-line favorite in the Distaff should make her Horse of the Year no matter what happens in the Classic. The filly won the Kentucky Oaks and four other Grade I or II stakes in six starts in 2024. McPeek’s victories in the Oaks and the next day’s Kentucky Derby with Mystik Dan were the first such sweep by a trainer since the 1950s.
“If she wins (the Distaff), I don’t don’t see how you can (deny) her,” McPeek said. “I’d be disappointed if she were to win the Distaff and not get that (Horse of the Year). But it’s up to others.
“It’s exciting to even be discussed in that realm. If you told me two years ago I’d go to the Fasig-Tipton Yearling Sale (in July 2022) and spend 40 grand (and get) a potential Horse of the Year, I’d say, ‘Yeah, right.’ “
Repole, a irrepressible New Yorker, expressed a different take but a note of magnanimity when he was asked for his view of the Horse of the Year picture.
“Is that after Fierceness wins the Classic or before?” Repole said of his horse, whose is 3 for 5 in 2024, his only poor effort being a 15th-place finish in the Kentucky Derby. “There are certain horses that, if (they) win here, it’s going to be hard not to view that horse as Horse of the Year.
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“(Thorpedo Anna) is an amazing horse. I give McPeek and the team over there tremendous credit for running in the Travers. She probably (gained) as much adulation coming in second to Fierceness as Fierceness did by winning. They put on a show. It was really special. She’s very deserving of Horse of the Year also.
“If both of them win and they both have a shot at Horse of the Year, I hope I beat her by a neck like we did in the Travers. Maybe I’ll have to remind people of that.”
Repole envisioned both Thorpedo Anna and Fierceness winning their Breeders’ Cup races and clinching the Eclipse Awards for the national 3-year-old fillies and colts divisions.
“Hopefully they’ll both get 3-year-old champion,” Repole said, “and we’ll figure out the other part later.”