Two outstanding rides made all the difference for the European team at Santa Anita on Saturday night, as Frankie Dettori took his score at the Breeders’ Cup to a round dozen aboard Queen’s Trust in the Filly & Mare Turf and Seamie Heffernan enjoyed his first win at the meeting on Highland Reel in the Turf. Dettori, predictably, performed a flying dismount afterwards. Heffernan, just as predictably, did not.
Heffernan will never be a household name like Dettori or move markets like Ryan Moore but his career record now includes 26 victories at Group One or Grade One level. In what is, by definition, a highly competitive business he has found a niche as a perennial No2 at Aidan O’Brien’s stable and, when it comes to making the best of one’s opportunities, there is no one in the sport to match him.
Moore, O’Brien’s principal jockey, was scarcely sighted on either day at Santa Anita. Found, the Arc winner, was the only one of his six rides to make the frame and she simply stayed on into third place in the Turf without ever threatening the winner.
But then none of Highland Reel’s opponents managed to threaten his lead either, as Heffernan seized his latest opportunity with a rare flourish. He was in control of the race from the opening strides and in effect secured victory almost half a mile out as he opened a lead that Highland Reel, a multiple winner at the highest level, was never going to surrender.
Plenty of the spectators in the 70,000-strong crowd pointed fingers at Heffernan’s opponents, with Javier Castellano a particular target for his ride on Flintshire, the second-favourite. Yet Heffernan executed his own plan so adroitly that there was very little the rest of them could do about it.
Moore, of course, will be back aboard Highland Reel if he now runs in either Japan or Hong Kong at the tail-end of the season, but Heffernan is fine with that.
“I’ve been there a long time and I went there as a second jockey and work rider,” he said on Saturday. “I get very, very well looked after. More recently my name is coming out of the hat for the rides and I’m happy with my position. There’s no pressure. I’m never really on the first string, though the first and third string can be equal, never mind the second string.”
O’Brien himself always bends over backwards to stress that Ballydoyle’s success is a team effort. Heffernan has now been part of that team for two decades – his first Group winner for O’Brien was in August 1996 – and his Santa Anita victory was one of the most memorable moments of what was, even by the standards of the Breeders’ Cup, an exceptional weekend.
Dettori’s win on Queen’s Trust was another. The horsemanship, timing and confidence that have made him one of the all-time greats were all in evidence as he squeezed Sir Michael Stoute’s filly past Lady Eli, the favourite, in the final stride, and then waggled his whip to celebrate victory a moment later. Dettori was seemingly the only person at Santa Anita who was absolutely confident that Queen’s Trust had got up and, as so often, he was spot on.
The memories that will live longest for the American fans, however, will be the contests which closed the cards on Friday and Saturday night. After one of the great stretch duels between Beholder and the previously unbeaten Songbird in Friday’s Distaff, it seemed greedy to hope for something to match it in the Classic on Saturday night but the race between Arrogate and California Chrome which closed the meeting was every bit as good.
As California Chrome, the darling of the Santa Anita crowd, led the field into the stretch, Arrogate, who made his racecourse debut only a few days after California Chrome’s win in the Dubai World Cup in March, seemed to be struggling to close the gap. Yet Mike Smith, his jockey, kept asking for more and Arrogate kept finding it. With just under a furlong to run, there was a visible moment when the balance of power shifted towards Arrogate, like a shuddering punch in a boxing ring, and he landed his blow so late that the old champion had no time to respond.
Arrogate, with only five starts on his record before Saturday, is the most lightly raced Classic winner in Breeders’ Cup history and the best news of all is that he will stay in training next season, when the Classic at Del Mar, a few hundred miles down the coast near San Diego, will presumably be his big target.
Before that it is possible that Arrogate will find a berth in the Pegasus Cup, a new event to be staged at Gulfstream Park in January and also the race that is likely to be the last of California Chrome’s career. The Pegasus Cup’s $12m purse, which will make it the world’s richest race, is funded by selling a dozen places in the line-up to leading owners at $1m apiece and, while Prince Khalid Abdullah’s Juddmonte Farms operation did not buy a berth originally, there seems little doubt that it will be able to acquire one if necessary.
The Pegasus Cup’s unusual format and sudden appearance in the racing programme has not met with universal approval in the States. First impressions are often the most important, however, and a rematch between Arrogate and California Chrome would be a very good way to announce its arrival.
