Daily Racing Form National Digital Edition
Enable heads parade of Euros making first visits to track
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Enable, the sensational filly who will likely be favored against the boys in Saturday’s $4 million Breeders’ Cup Turf, made her first visit to the Churchill Downs track Monday morning. She didn’t see very much of it.
Enable, along with the other John Gosden-trained Breeders’ Cup runners – Roaring Lion (Classic) and Legends of War (Juvenile Turf Sprint) – simply jogged in the one-mile chute around 7:30 a.m. after being released from quarantine.
“She was a little bit nervous but after one lap she was all right,” said Imran Shadwani, Enable’s exercise rider. “She was enjoying it, really.”
Shadwani said Enable seems to have come out of her neck victory in the Group 1 Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe on Oct. 7 in good order.
“She just woke up after the Arc,” Shadwani said. “That was her first grass race after one year.”
Enable has raced only twice this year. Her first race was a Group 3 win over a synthetic surface at Kempton on Sept. 8, 11 months after she won the 2017 Arc de Triomphe.
Shadwani said course condition shouldn’t be an issue for Enable and he expressed confidence the filly will be successful on Saturday.
“She should do it nicely,” he said. “She should win. She’s got such a big heart and she’s pretty fit. She’s a star anyway.”
Enable, a 4-year-old daughter of Nathaniel owned by Juddmonte Farms, has won 9 of 10 career starts. She has six Group 1 victories, including back-toback victories in the Arc.
Euros getting acclimated
It began Monday morning when two-time Arc winner Enable stepped onto the Churchill Downs racing surface alongside her stablemate Roaring Lion, winner of four straight Group 1 races, and ended when 2017 Breeders’ Cup Turf-winner Talismanic, walking with fellow Breeders’ Cup Turf entrant Waldgeist, left the track through the same gap about two hours later.
Pocket Dynamo didn’t go out to exercise Monday (though nothing is amiss with the colt), but a couple of dozen other overseas shippers trekked out from their temporary quarters in the Breeders’ Cup quarantine facility at the west end of the Churchill backstretch.
The bulk of the Europeans arrived late Friday night at Churchill Downs after flying to the U.S. from England. Godolphin sent its BC runners Saturday, and trainer Aidan O’Brien had a plane of horses en route from Ireland on Monday. O’Brien has pre-entered and shipped 15 horses, but only 13 are likely to make it into the
final fields of eight Breeders’ Cup races.
Depending on what time they touch down in America, overseas shippers clear USDA quarantine in time to train their second or third day here. The horses on the England flight cleared in plenty of time for Monday exercise, but the Godolphin shipment got out of quarantine just in time to make it to the track before training ended Monday.
International shipping has become such routine science that most horses these days barely seem to notice it. Nearly all the Europeans were full of life, even Roaring Lion, who had a demanding race Oct. 20 when he won the Group 1 Queen Elizabeth II Stakes. If that effort took a toll on the colt it wasn’t showing Monday as he bounced and played coming onto and off the track.
Most everyone was on good behavior, though the French 2-year-old filly Lily’s Candle made a brief try at sending her rider sprawling just after getting out onto the track. The BC Juvenile Fillies Turf-bound Lily’s Candle is not evil, just full of mischief – “sassy” in the words of people who’ve spent time with her the last couple of days. The gray bundle of energy almost created her own quarantine issue when she managed to grab a paper documenting results of routine veterinary work and began chewing it.
Lily’s Candle’s troublemaking, however, quickly was snuffed out.
Vibrance may change tactics
Vibrance found herself on the early lead before settling for a distant second behind Bellafina when last they met in the Sept. 29 Chandelier at Santa Anita.
But with more speed in the mix for the $2 million Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies – namely, Serengeti Empress and Jaywalk – trainer Michael McCarthy is hoping things will shape up differently for Vibrance.
“There are some very fast fillies in there,” he said. “We’re hoping our filly will settle early and hopefully make her run at the right time.”
McCarthy now lives in Altadena, Calif., but is no stranger to Louisville, having lived here off-and-on for several years while working as an assistant to Todd Pletcher.
McPeek eyes end to BC drought
Kenny McPeek is 0 for 29 in the Breeders’ Cup, but so what? The late Bobby Frankel, one of the greatest trainers in history, was 0 for 38 before winning the 2001 BC Sprint with Squirtle Squirt.
“We’ve led horses over there and they’ve run big but just got beat,” said McPeek, who has five seconds and eight thirds in BC competitions. “Will it be our turn this year? Hopefully, yes.”
Besides longshot Signalman in the Juvenile, McPeek has a major contender for the Juvenile Fillies in Restless Rider, a sharp last-out winner of the Grade 1 Alcibiades at Keeneland.
“She’s doing just fantastic,” he said. “She was professional as usual in her last breeze and went great. She’s all teed up.”
McPeek, a trainer since 1985, has accumulated more than $78.5 million in stable earnings and has sent out the winners of more than 1,600 races, including 83 graded stakes.
‘Stormy’ needs smooth start
If not for an awkward start in her latest outing, Stormy Embrace might be entering the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint on a four-race win streak. But the 4-year-old filly was away a step slowly in the Sept. 8 Sheer Drama at Gulfstream Park and finished third.
“The race won’t look very good on paper, but she actually ran really big,” said trainer Kathleen O’Connell. “She just had too much ground to make up.”
Stormy Embrace, who earned a Win and You’re In berth into the seven-furlong Filly-Mare Sprint with a six-length victory in the Princess Rooney in late June, arrived here from Florida over the weekend and trained over the Churchill surface for the first time Monday.
“It looked like she handled it really well,” said O’Connell. “We’re excited about her chances.”
Shamrock Rose feeling good
No, trainer Mark Casse was not looking ahead to the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint prior to Shamrock Rose pulling an 18-1 upset in the Oct. 20 Raven Run at Keeneland.
“I thought we had a big chance in the Raven Run, but you’d have to be a genius to know all this would wind up happening,” said Casse.
Shamrock Rose, a Pennsylvania-bred by First Dude, will be running back in just two weeks, but “she’s got a lot of confidence right now,” said Casse.
“She thinks she can beat anybody,” he said.
Shamrock Rose is expected to be one of at least three 3-yearolds in the $1 million Filly-Mare Sprint, along with Mia Mischief and Happy Like a Fool (and possibly Dream Pauline). From 11 prior runnings, no 3-yearold has won the seven-furlong race, although several have been favored, including Unique Bella, seventh last year as the 11-10 choice.