Of the many factors that go into picking the winner of a horse race, whether it’s a cheap sprint on a weekday or a multi-million-dollar test of stamina at the Breeders’ Cup, none is bigger than recent form.
Which horses ran best in the past few weeks? Who looks sharpest lately? Who seems to be tailing off?
This might present a problem for fans trying to pick the winner of the Breeders’ Cup Classic, the $7 million climactic event of the Breeders’ Cup at Del Mar on Friday, Oct. 31, and Saturday, Nov. 1. Most of the contenders in the 1¼-mile race for 3-year-olds and up have no recent form in the sense that most of us grew up with.
Early favorites Sovereignty and Fierceness last competed in late August, winning impressively in major races at Saratoga and Del Mar. Defending Classic champion Sierra Leone, Journalism, Mindframe and Antiquarian also have been off since August; the first two ran solid seconds and Mindframe barely got out of the starting gate before losing his jockey, while Antiquarian scored his first major victory.
The only horses among the 11 “pre-entered” this week for the Classic who raced more recently are Forever Young (in Japan), Baeza, Locked and Nevada Beach, all of whom needed and got wins in September and October.
It’s not new to see top horses come into the Classic well-rested, “training up to the race” instead of tuning up in traditional preps four or five weeks out. Sierra Leone and Fierceness finished 1-2 in 2024 off 70-day breaks, the same layoff as Sovereignty is getting in 2025. What is new is seeing most of the provisional field for America’s richest race join the trend.
In the first two years of the Breeders’ Cup, Classic winners Wild Again and Proud Truth had raced 12 and seven days before. Incredible by today’s standards, though perhaps no more so than remembering that back then pitchers went nine innings, basketball stars suited up every game and football and hockey players soldiered on with concussions.
Any trainer would say he’s doing what’s best for the individual horse, but what explains the more widespread embrace of load management?
“That’s kind of the thing now. Spacing (races), they’re finding, is really good with these horses. It’s just an evolution of the game,” said John Sadler, who has trained Classic winners both ways, Accelerate coming in off a victory at Santa Anita 35 days earlier in 2018 but Flightline having been off for 63 days in 2022.
The trend toward horses racing less often at all levels of the game is widely attributed to modern breeding practices producing less-hardy thoroughbreds.
Richard Mandella, whose 2003 Classic winner Pleasantly Perfect raced at Santa Anita three weeks before, acknowledges that “the horse nowadays tends to appreciate” longer breaks. Mandella also says trainers have more incentive to try to make every start count.
“In the old days, they didn’t have those (win) percentages under your name (in past-performance charts),” Mandella said. “Trust me, that’s a big thing to do with it. If you’re going bad, you’re going to make sure the sumbitch is ready, you’re not going to run one short.”
Tim Yakteen, who worked as an assistant to Charlie Whittingham in the 1990s, remembers how the legendary trainer raced horses into condition for a major race.
“He was probably the master at picking the target and having his horses campaign into that race,” Yakteen said. “But you don’t see that as much nowadays. The trend is to want that exceptional effort every time they show up.”
Another cause, suggested by Sadler: As the public pays less and less attention to races below the level of the Triple Crown and Breeders’ Cup, the success of a horse owner’s year depends more on the results of a few huge races than on accumulating wins.
Sadler mentions one other reason: more restrictions on therapeutic drugs.
“The thing they don’t talk about is they’ve taken away medication,” Sadler said. “The fans expect them to run just as much, but they need time to recoup. You say, ‘In the old days, the guys ran in all the preps.’ Well, in the old days, they had some help.”
The trend shows up in most of the 14 Breeders’ Cup races, especially the nine for 3-year-olds and up. Of the pre-entered horses listed as favorites by the Daily Racing Form’s David Aragona, six would go into races off layoffs of two months or more: Sovereignty, as well as Bob Baffert-trained Nysos in the Dirt Mile and Seismic Beauty in the Distaff; Mandella’s Kopion in the Filly and Mare Sprint; Cherie DeVaux’s She Feels Pretty in the Filly and Mare Turf; and Phil D’Amato’s Motorious in the Turf Sprint.
Top horses staying in the barn certainly don’t help to build excitement for the Breeders’ Cup. The question is whether it affect the outcomes next Friday and Saturday.
Top trainers can get top horses in shape without traditional prep races. But some trainers do it better than others. Statistics show Chad Brown, trainer of Classic hopefuls Sierra Leone and potential rabbit Contrary Thinking, and Bill Mott, who has Sovereignty, get some of their best results with horses coming off layoffs of 60 days or more. Some horses, too. Sierra Leone and Michael McCarthy’s Journalism have taken big steps forward in races following breaks.
The Classic field, post positions and morning-line odds will be set Monday. Then bettors can get serious about analyzing horses’ class (starting with Sovereignty, Sierra Leone, Fierceness and Forever Young) and pace scenarios – and, maybe more important for the horses who haven’t been racing, reading reports about how they look in morning workouts and gallops at Del Mar.
One familiar measuring stick, the results of late prep races, is not available in this Classic. That still leaves a lot of tools in the box for handicappers to use in the next week.
Follow horse racing correspondent Kevin Modesti at X.com/KevinModesti.