Breeders' Cup 2015: Winners and Losers from Keeneland
Knowing he had nothing left to run for and nothing to save for later, jockey Victor Espinoza turned American Pharoah loose to win the Breeders’ Cup Classic by 6 ½ lengths in a smashing, record-breaking time of 2:00.07*.
Over an incredible slate of racing, American Pharoah rose to the moment and threw down the hammer.
“We want him to go out as a winner,” Ahmed Zayat, owner of American Pharoah, said during the NBC broadcast. “American Pharoah is a winner.”
And so too are some others this weekend. Read on for the winners and, yes, some losers from the Breeders’ Cup at Keeneland.
*I actually got goosebumps writing that winning time.
Loser: Arc Winners
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Golden Horn, winner of Europe’s most prestigious race—the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe—ran a heck of a Breeders’ Cup Turf in defeat.
The filly Found beat him in a thrilling finish in the Turf. Arc winners take a lot of money, but they don’t fare well in the U.S. despite their superiority on the grass. Arc winners are 0-for-11—make that 0-for-12 now—in the Breeders’ Cup.
John Gosden, trainer to Golden Horn, said after the race, per Jason Frakes of the Courier-Journal: “If it was on our type of good ground, I’d love to have seen them on that. We knew coming to a sand-based track this was a strong possibility. I said it to everyone beforehand, so I’m not inventing something new.”
The thing with the Arc is the timing: It’s three weeks before the Breeders’ Cup. The Arc runs at 1 ½ miles in France, and then the horse must ship to the United States, hang out in quarantine and train here. It’s all very taxing.
As a result, Arc winners fare poorly. Though Golden Horn ran a winning race, he merely lost to a slightly faster horse in Found.
Winner: Chad Brown
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Chad Brown, who is not known for training dirt winners, won his first Breeders’ Cup dirt race when Wavell Avenue soared down the track to take the Filly and Mare Sprint.
Brown said in a Breeders’ Cup release: “We thought there'd be a strong pace up front. Joel (Rosario) has gotten along with this filly so well. … We were really confident if she got a strong pace she could get there. It's a thrill to be here. I'm so proud of her.”
But Brown wasn’t done yet.
In the Filly and Mare Turf, the very next race, his six-year-old mare Stephanie’s Kitten stormed up the rail, found a seam and won for Ken and Sarah Ramsey.
Brown said in the release:
"She's tough, I'll tell you…I was quite concerned when I saw that Irad (Ortiz Jr.) had her last in a race that had no pace, and when he chose to go up the inside to get through, I thought that he was going to have to get real lucky, and I'm glad he did. But I have a lot of confidence in Irad. We have a perfect record together so I have a lot of confidence in him. He rode the filly like she was a winner the whole way. I'm so proud of them today.
"
The wins gave Brown his sixth and seventh Breeders’ Cup victories, and he’s only in his mid-30s.
Loser: So Far from Home
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Tonalist is the horse for course. If the Breeders’ Cup ran at Belmont Park, then Tonalist would take everyone’s dough, but this horse isn’t the same away from Big Sandy.
He was the wise-guy horse, especially at 6-1. Tonalist came into the race off his second consecutive Jockey Club Gold Cup, drew a favorable post and had little traffic around Keeneland’s oval.
Take what Ellis Starr, Equibase.com’s handicapper, had to say:
"Tonalist gets the ground saving rail for the Classic, as well as John Velazquez, who has been in the saddle for his last four races. The best of those four was earlier this month when winning the Jockey Club Gold Cup by nearly five lengths, earning a 123 figure for the second race in a row and a 120 or better figure for the fourth time this year in five races…Tonalist may be in a better early position and able to capitalize and get the lead in the stretch before Honor Code gets into high gear, resulting in Tonalist winning the Classic.
"
None of that happened for Tonalist. He did get a ground-saving trip and did nothing with it as Effinex held on for second and Honor Code closed with a flourish to finish third.
If Tonalist remains in training and the Breeders’ Cup is at Belmont, bet the heck out of him. If not, leave him alone and be wiser for it.
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Winner: Maria Borell and Her Lasix-Free Champion
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Maria Borell, trainer of Runhappy, was perhaps the second-best story and the only one to threaten American Pharoah for headlines and good cheer.
Borell is a trainer of modest origins with a small stable, but she had a horse with a ton of speed and trained him to perfection. Runhappy won the Sprint, which is run at six furlongs, breaking the track record in a time of 1:08.58.
On top of that, Borell doesn’t administer Lasix to her horses, the diuretic that helps with pulmonary bleeding. Nearly all American horses run on it—and not necessarily because the horses bleed. Some use it because everyone else is on it, so no trainer wants to cede an edge.
Borell said in a Breeders’ Cup release after the win: "I guess I should say anti‑drugs just because I think it's better for the integrity of the breed. I want us to have stronger horses that can run 30, 40 times in the future, like they used to be able to, and not be masked by drugs."
That’s a big voice from somebody so young (32) who doesn’t have quite the toehold in the game to make that kind of a statement. Of course, you need an owner who is willing to let this supposed competitive disadvantage fly.
But when you have a horse as zippy as Runhappy, he makes the drug-free soapbox look a lot more inviting.
Too bad a horse like American Pharoah, who will cover thousands of mares in his lifetime, ran his career on Lasix. He probably never needed it.
Loser: Frosted Not Cool
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This horse was supposed to be the antidote to the American Pharoah virus. He challenged American Pharoah in the Travers before finishing third and then won the Pennsylvania Derby and trained well heading to the Classic.
John Pricci, a handicapper and executive editor at HorseRaceInsider.com, thought he was maybe the horse to beat Pharoah.
He wrote: “Frosted, meanwhile, has shown the incremental improvement one likes to see in winning the Pennsylvania Derby and he has looked more visually impressive than he has all year. Final Penn Derby furlongs in 12 seconds will do that. Six weeks of spacing between starts is ideal.”
Where was he in the pace scenario? Nowhere. That was his best shot at slaying the dragon, and he finished second to last without so much as sniffing Pharoah’s tail.
“He flattened out late,” trainer Kiaran McLaughlin said in a Breeders’ Cup release. “Very disappointed. Thought we could be second or third, not sixth or seventh.”
Perhaps it was more jockey error by Joel Rosario and maybe Frosted simply didn’t like the track, but either way you slice it, Frosted threw in a dud on the biggest day of the year*.
*Second biggest for a three-year-old. The biggest will always be the Kentucky Derby.
Winner: The New York Bred
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Effinex flew very close to the sun and unlike Icarus didn’t get burned. A horse of mid to late-pack tendencies, Effinex was the horse who challenged American Pharoah, rating in second and ultimately finishing second.
At odds of 20-1, this New York-bred four-year-old was perfectly ridden by Mike Smith, a three-time winner of the Classic. As a result the second-place purse of $2.75 million made Effinex a millionaire and nearly tripled his career earnings of $912,250.
“Once we hit the 3/8 pole I thought ‘Don’t panic, don’t panic,” Smith said in a Breeders’ Cup release. “Maybe we can hold on for second,’ Passing the 3/8 pole we really picked it up. The real guy (American Pharoah) showed up today.”
Effinex loves to run long. He beat Tonalist in the Grade 2 Suburban at Belmont Park and loves the 10-furlong distance, notching two wins at 1 ¼ miles.
In another year maybe Effinex gets up for first, but he had the unfortunate luck of being born around the same time as American Pharoah and ran up against a god.
Loser: The Misplaced Confidence of Donegal Racing
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Donegal Racing can boast that at one point it defeated American Pharoah. It owns Keen Ice, the son of Curlin who clipped American Pharoah at the wire in the Travers Stakes.
At 12-1 on the morning line, owner Jerry Crawford all but guaranteed a win against Pharoah.
"We're very positive and bullish," he said in Beth Harris’ Associated Press story (h/t MySanAntonio.com). "We'll have a little bit of that 12-1, thank you very much."
Well, Keen Ice finished fourth and wasn’t even in the same zip code. He broke well and had no excuses.
Listen, on this day, nobody was going to beat American Pharoah, but after catching Pharoah in the Travers, there was an inflated sense of overconfidence that didn’t translate well to the track.
Fourth in the Classic is nothing to snub the old nose at ($300,000 in earnings), but when you want to “have a little bit of that” 12-1 and don’t show up? That lands you on the loser slide.
Winner: A Horse of a Lifetime
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What more can be said about this darn-near perfect horse? American Pharoah delivered on the hype at every turn.
Race caller Larry Collmus said it best when he piped, “A Triple Crown winner! A Breeders’ Cup winner! A HORSE of a LIFETIME!”
That’s the perfect, five-word summation. Pharoah brought the hammer, and the crowds came to worship at his feet. Oh, and he smashed the track record with a 10-furlong time of 2:00.07.
Bob Baffert, Pharoah’s trainer, who also won his second straight Breeders’ Cup Classic, said in a Breeders’ Cup release:
"We were hoping for a performance like this. When he’s right, if you let him run...I feel really good about it. What a horse! I'll never see another one like him. I'm just proud of my team, and Jimmy Barnes and I'm so happy for the Zayats. I'm emotional right now. I had more pressure. I wanted him to go out a winner. This one was for ‘Pharoah.’ It was for the people who came to see this and I'm glad he gave the people what they wanted to see. I'll never have another horse like him.
"
American Pharoah’s only hiccup came in the Travers when Keen Ice beat him. Pharoah was tired and overworked from the day before the Travers when 15,000 people turned up to watch him run. Already a bit fatigued from the campaign, that workout took just enough pepper out of him to cost him the race. That allowed Team Baffert to regroup and train him up to the performance we can all say we’ve seen.
Innumerable trainers and fans were moved to tears during the entire day of racing, whether that was Borell or Mark Casse (who won his first two Breeders’ Cup races this weekend after decades of training horses.).
These animals, this sport, can have this type of effect. And American Pharoah gave us the Triple Crown and, at season’s end, a classic Classic, one for the record books.
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