Field remains fluid five weeks out

What do we know about the $1 million Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf with just five weeks until the 12th edition of the race? Not much.

North American 2-year-old turf form remains murky and it will be a couple of weeks before European horse folks sort out which juveniles will be pointed toward Churchill Downs, where the Juvenile Turf is contested over one mile on Nov. 2.

What we do know: Fog of War, who looked like the leader of the North American division after a cozy win in the Grade 1 Summer Stakes on Sept. 16 at Woodbine, is out for the year with a shin injury. While he won’t be at Churchill Downs, it’s odds-on that trainer Aidan O’Brien will have at least one and probably multiple Juvenile Turf entries.

O’Brien won the race last year at Del Mar with Mendelssohn and won it the last time Churchill hosted the Breeders’ Cup, in 2011 with Wrote. O’Brien has won the race four times in the last seven years, with George Vancouver in 2012 and Hit It a Bomb in 2015 following Wrote.

Hit It a Bomb came out of a listed-stakes win over the allweather surface at Dundalk to win at Keeneland, but O’Brien’s other three winners passed through the Grade 1 Dewhurst at Newmarket. The 2018 Dewhurst is scheduled for Oct. 13 and could include the O’Brientrained Anthony Van Dyck, who ran just well enough Sept. 16 at The Curragh finishing second in the Group 1 National Stakes to feel like a major Juvenile Turf candidate. Ten Sovereigns, who is expected to race in the Middle Park Stakes at Newmarket, also has Juvenile Turf potential.

The Middle Park is one of two races Saturday at Newmarket with Juvenile Turf implications, the other being the Royal Lodge Stakes, which is part of the Breeders’ Cup Challenge Series. Madhmoon, based in Ireland with trainer Kevin Prendergast, won the Champions Juvenile Turf on Sept. 15 at The Curragh, the first BC Challenge Race in the division. The other such race upcoming overseas is the Jean-Luc Lagardere at Longchamp on the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe card of Oct. 7.

The only divisional BC Challenge race left in North America is the Oct. 7 Bourbon Stakes at Keeneland. Henley’s Joy, who won the Kentucky Downs Juvenile on Sept. 1, is being aimed at the Bourbon, as is the sharp Belmont maiden winner Current, according to trainer Todd Pletcher. Pletcher also trains Opry, who won the With Anticipation Stakes at Saratoga and is the likely favorite Saturday in the Pilgrim Stakes at Belmont. The division’s West Coast wing could come into better focus with the Oct. 8 Zuma Beach at Santa Anita.

War of Will, second to Fog of War in the Summer, could train up to the Juvenile Turf or start once more before the race (the Bourbon seems the logical spot), trainer Mark Casse said. Also worthy of mention are the Summer’s third- and fourthplace finishers, Nashtrick and Avie’s Flatter, both trained by Josie Carroll.

And finally, Team Valor International last week bought a French colt named The Black Album who is being pointed directly to the Juvenile Turf. For the rest of the field we’ll have to wait.