Golden Horn, the Derby and Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe winner, left the quarantine barn here for the first time on Tuesday morning to exercise on Keeneland’s training track but he did so in steady rain and is expected to race on good ground at best when he makes his final start in Saturday’s Breeders’ Cup Turf.
Five Arc winners have lined up for the Turf a few weeks later but all have been beaten and only one, Trempolino in 1987, has finished in the first three. Dancing Brave was fourth in 1986, Saumarez fifth in 1990, Subotica was also fifth in 1992 and Dylan Thomas sank without trace in the mud at Monmouth Park in 2007.
Golden Horn is odds-on at around 1-2 to become the first horse to complete the double and has a good draw in stall one with a fast starter immediately outside to give him a lead. The ground, however, could be a cause for concern, given the insistence of John Gosden, Golden Horn’s trainer, that the colt prefers fast going.
Gosden is due in Lexington on Wednesday, when steady rain is also forecast for the area, though the outlook for Thursday and Friday is much better and there is little or no rain expected on Saturday. “Right now we are soft,” Javier Barajas, Keeneland’s track supervisor, said on Tuesday, “which by European standards would be good to soft.”
Frankie Dettori, who will ride Golden Horn in Saturday’s race, watched from the sidelines as the Derby winner left the quarantine barn before dawn and cantered round a few circuits of Keeneland’s Polytrack training circuit. Golden Horn looked in outstanding condition and, though his season began back in mid-April, he appeared bright and keen and a fine advertisement for Dettori’s belief that he is one of the toughest horses he has ridden.
Dettori has two rides here on Thursday and two more on the first Breeders’ Cup card on Friday, including Richard Hannon’s Illuminate, the runner-up in the Cheveley Park Stakes, in the Juvenile Fillies’ Turf. It will be a chance to familiarise himself with this tight, compact circuit in the city of Lexington, which is at the heart of America’s breeding industry and which will be staging the Breeders’ Cup for the first time.
Dettori will be a key player on Saturday, too, when, in addition to Golden Horn, his mounts include Undrafted, the winner of the Diamond Jubilee Stakes at Royal Ascot in June, in the Turf Sprint and Judy The Beauty, last year’s winner, in the Filly & Mare Sprint.
According to the betting the only significant rival to Golden Horn is Found, from Aidan O’Brien’s stable in Ireland, who has already finished behind the favourite in both the Irish Champion Stakes and the Arc. While Arc winners have a desperate record in the Turf, however, no fewer than eight winners of the Turf were beaten at Longchamp a few weeks earlier. Three of those were trained by O’Brien: High Chaparral in both 2002 and 2003 and St Nicholas Abbey in 2011.
Golden Horn is the undoubted star of the European team at this year’s Breeders’ Cup and, after Dylan Thomas and Sakhee, who was a close second behind Tiznow in the 2001 Classic, only the third Arc winner to run at the meeting in the last 23 years.
There is strength in depth to the European challenge, too, with several favourites and second-favourites scattered through the Cup’s 13 races. Gleneagles, the 2,000 Guineas winner, would be an unexpected winner of the Classic when he makes his dirt debut against American Pharoah, the Triple Crown winner, on Saturday night, but five of the meeting’s six turf races have a European-trained favourite.
Legatissimo, the 1,000 Guineas winner and one of three of this year’s English Classic winners running at the meeting, is a strong favourite for the Filly & Mare Turf, while the Andre Fabre-trained pair Make Believe and Esoterique head the market for the Mile. O’Brien, meanwhile, has the market leaders for both the Juvenile Turf and Juvenile Fillies’ Turf, in Hit It A Bomb and Alice Springs respectively. Both two-year-olds will be ridden by Ryan Moore.
Coral make three European winners the most likely outcome at 13-8, while it is 9-4 that there will be four and 6-1 for five or more. A repeat of last year, when the biggest raiding party in Breeders’ Cup history returned with just a single winner, is 12-1, while a complete blank for the first time since 2007 is a 50-1 chance.
Untapable, the winner of the Breeders’ Cup Distaff at Santa Anita 12 months ago, is out of Friday’s renewal of the $2m event after she was found to have “a slightly elevated temperature”, according to Ron Winchell, her owner. As a result, Peace And War, the winner of the Grade One Alcibiades Stakes at Keeneland last year when trained in Britain by Ollie Stevens but now with Graham Motion, will get a place in Friday’s feature event.
