Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Best Breeders’ Cup Achievements Ever
LOS ANGELES, October 27, 2009--After starting out hoping to compile a short list of the greatest Breeders' Cup achievements of all-time, I quickly realized that I was in deep water. It's impossible to throw all the extraordinary accomplishments during the Breeders' 25-year run against the wall, and hope that only five will stick. But I'm determined to stay the course. There will be five only, and I'll leave it to a higher order to fill in the blanks.
The first rule of this exercise is that there are no rules. Achievements can be as short as one race, can be umbrellaed into one afternoon, or can occur over a period of years. Horses, groups of horses, horse owners, breeders, trainers, jockeys and even farriers, grooms and hot walkers are eligible, although I must say in advance that no owners, breeders, farriers, grooms or hot walkers made the final cut.
5. Jerry Bailey riding the Classic winner four times in five years.
Before he moved into TVland, Bailey won a record 15 Breeders' Cup races. Five of them came in the Classic, four between 1991 and 1995. Before Bailey's Classic period, he had no right to walk and ride with a swagger. He had led the country in nothing and, we found out much later, had a drinking problem. Trainers didn't come to Bailey's agents with top horses to ride, the agents canvassed the backsides, hoping to pick up an occasional crumb. From 1984 through 1990, Bailey had ridden in only seven Breeders' Cup races, finishing second with one and far back aboard the others. In 1986, Bailey's Classic mount ran 11th, and in 1990 he was astride Home at Last, Unbridled's stablemate, who failed to finish.
By November of 1991, Black Tie Affair had been ridden by 10 different jockeys in 44 races, none of them Jerry Bailey. Pat Day was 3 for 3 riding the gray 5-year-old, but for the Breeders' Cup he chose Summer Squall. Under Bailey, Black Tie Affair broke on top, was allowed an uncontested lead through moderate fractions and then outkicked Twilight Agenda, Unbridled and Fly So Free. Summer Squall finished ninth, and Black Tie Affair was voted Horse of the Year.
After Bailey finished fifth on Sultry Song in the 1992 Classic, his mount for the 1993 running was the sore-backed French longshot, Arcangues. Some dolt in the Los Angeles Times wrote on the day of the race: "What's this horse doing in this race?" No names, but his initials were B.C. Bailey left the Santa Anita jockeys' room and headed for the paddock, not knowing how to pronounce his horse's name (it's are-KONG), unable to speak French and not sure what Arcangues' trainer, Andre Fabre, looked like. Arcangues ran down favored Bertrando in the stretch, paying $269.20 for $2. He was also the "Holy Ghost," the third No. 11 to win on the card. My wife Pat had bet "Holy Ghost" horses religiously for years. Except that day. But that's another story.
Back at Churchill in 1994, Bailey was riding another longshot, another horse with Arcangues' out-of-the-clouds running style. Concern had only one horse beaten after six furlongs, but he rallied from the outside, caught favored Tabasco Cat with 20 yards to go and won by a neck. Concern's win mutuel, while not as juicy as Arcangues', was a tidy $17.
Cigar was Classic win No. 4 for Bailey, at Belmont in 1995. He was 7-10 and ran like it. Overall, Bailey won 18 races with Cigar, including the 15-stake streak that ended at Del Mar in 1996.
Bailey's fifth and last Breeders' Cup Classic win didn't come until 10 years later, with Saint Liam at Belmont in 2005. Like Black Tie Affair and Cigar in 1995 and 1996, Saint Liam was also voted Horse of the Year. Somehow, Cigar and Bailey were without that patented finishing kick in the 1996 Classic and settled for third place.
4. Dickinson's mastery with Da Hoss
Arguably, Michael Dickinson's work to win the 1996 and 1998 Miles with Da Hoss was the greatest Breeders' Cup training job of them all.
At four, Da Hoss was a gelding who had usually run well, but a torn hoof and hind-end lameness had interrupted his career. In 1996, he was 8-1 at Woodbine as Gary Stevens rode him to a 1 1/2-length win.
Dickinson was unable to get Da Hoss back to the races in 1997, and in 1998 the 6-year-old's only prep going into the Mile at Churchill Downs was at Colonial Downs a month before. This time with John Velazquez in the irons, Da Hoss beat Hawksley Hill by a head for a $25.20 payoff. This was Da Hoss' last year on the track, but Dickinson's niche in Breeders' Cup lore was secure.
3. A perfect ending for a perfect filly
I really wanted to put Wild Again's win in the inaugural Classic in 1984 in this spot. Wild Again's improbable win had all the trappings (a $360,000 supplemental, a well-traveled trainer, a slam-bang finish with Gate Dancer and Slew o' Gold, denial of a foul claim, Pat Day's breakout win, the owners collecting more at the windows than they did from the purse). But Personal Ensign's win at Churchill in 1988, in the race that should have always been called the Breeders' Cup Distaff, ruled the day.
Personal Ensign was undefeated in 12 tries. This was to be her final race. Also in the field were Winning Colors, a Kentucky Derby winner, and Goodbye Halo, winner of the Kentucky Oaks. At the wire, it was Personal Ensign, by a nose, and Winning Colors, by another half-length, over Goodbye Halo. Personal Ensign had almost two lengths to make up from the eighth pole home, when neither Winning Colors nor Goodbye Halo showed any signs of stopping. "I had the finish line pretty well measured," said a nonchalant winning jockey, Randy Romero, afterwards. He was the only cat in the house who knew that.
2. A neck and a nose = two wins for Tiznow
To make Tiznow eligible for the 2000 Classic at Churchill, his owners, Cee Straub-Rubins and Michael Cooper, had to pay a $360,000 supplementary fee. The day before the race, a few hours before I was to go over to the Brown Hotel in Louisville to interview Straub-Rubins, one of her aides called to say that she wasn't feeling well. Straub-Rubins attended the race, as Tiznow, at 9-1, beat Giant's Causeway by a neck. Three days later, back in California, the cancer-stricken Straub-Rubens died, at 83, in a Newport Beach hospital. Tiznow would go on to the Horse of the Year title. "I think the two minutes it took Tiznow to win the Classic were the best Cee felt in a long time," Cooper said. "It was that horse that kept her going."
In 2001, at Belmont Park, Tiznow and his jockey, Chris McCarron, seemed beaten as the field turned for home. Albert the Great had the lead on the inside, Tiznow was trying to rally, and Sakhee, the Arc de Triomphe winner, was seven wide while seeming to be moving fastest of all. "I thought we were beat," trainer Jay Robbins said.
But Tiznow disposed of Albert the Great and outfought Sakhee and Frankie Dettori to prevail by a nose. "At the line," Dettori said, "I looked over and saw the other horse, and the first thing I noticed was his head. I knew that if we were going to the wire together, that head was going to get my horse beat. It was the size of dinosaur's."
1. Mandella's four-bagger
The week before the 2003 Breeders' Cup at Santa Anita, I came across the program from the 1993 running in that Mt. Everest of debris also known as my home office. At the draw, I gave it to Richard Mandella, who had saddled two Breeders' Cup winners and two undercard stakes winners at Santa Anita 10 years before. Little did we realize that the 1993 and 2003 programs could be used as bookends for Mandella's Hall of Fame career.
In 2003, Mandella won the second Breeders' Cup race of the day, with Halfbridled in the Juvenile Fillies. Three races before the finish, Mandella was back in the winner's circle, this time with Action This Day in the Juvenile. Then his Johar finished in a dead heat for first place with High Chaparral in the Turf. As the Classic neared, Mandella's chance for a fourth Breeders' Cup win of the day was the unlikely Pleasantly Perfect, who went off at 14-1. Medaglia d'Oro was favored. At the quarter pole, Congaree was on the lead, Medaglia d'Oro was second and Pleasantly Perfect was fifth, with five lengths to make up. But where it counted it was Pleasantly Perfect, under Alex Solis. Medaglia d'Oro and the king of the Classic, Jerry Bailey, were second.
"Ya know," Mandella said. "It really didn't hit me, what I had done. About an hour after I got home, it hit me."
Written by Bill Christine
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