Daily Racing Form National Digital Edition
Several European invaders look to repeat 2020 success
DEL MAR, Calif. – The international quarantine area on the east side of the Del Mar backstretch has buzzed like a beehive since Sunday morning.
More than 50 overseas runners, a record, have traveled for the 2021 Breeders’ Cup, a massive contingent to accommodate.
For racing officials, the challenges are logistical – safely and efficiently providing a temporary training base for a horde of animals used to walking around wooded trails half the day.
For handicappers and bettors, the challenges are analytical, wrapping one’s brain around straight-course sprints, uphill finishes, turf stakes in Germany, and dirt races in Japan. Pull all the strands together and you just might find yourself a honey sweet winner on Breeders’ Cup Saturday.
Here’s a peek at the internationals.
Turf
Runners: Broome, Japan, Sisfahan, Tarnawa, Teona, Walton Street, Yibir, Bolshoi Ballet
You have to start with Tarnawa in the $3 million Turf – and you probably should end up with her, too.
Tarnawa won the 2020 Turf and her 2021 campaign at age 5 has been geared around three main goals – the Irish Champion, the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, and Saturday’s race. She’s 0 for 2 in goal-meeting so far, but Tarnawa comes to Del Mar clearly the most likely winner.
After cruising to an easy comeback win in August for trainer Dermot Weld, Tarnawa went to the Irish Champion, run at 1 1/4 miles over Leopardstown’s relatively flat, lefthanded course and finished second by three-quarters of a length to one of Europe’s best horses, St Mark’s Basilica. Tarnawa would have won had St Mark’s Basilica not drifted dramatically right through the final furlong and a half, taking Tarnawa some seven or eight paths off her intended course. Even after detouring toward the grandstand, Tarnawa edged the high-class colt Poetic Flare, to whom she gave weight, and finished second.
She also finished second in the Arc but reverse her trip with victorious longshot Torquator Tasso and Tarnawa wins. Torquator Tasso waited on the outside and rallied late down the center (and possibly the better part) of the course, not a straw in his path, while Tarnawa, trapped inside, wove in and out of horses through the final quarter-mile.
Tarnawa, according to Trakus, ran the race’s fastest single 200-meter split, going in 11.78 seconds between the 400 and 200 meters.
Wins are overrated, good losses underrated, and now Tarnawa has two of those in a row. Weld said Tarnawa seemed tired just after the Arc but bounced back to her betterfeeling self, and the mare on display mornings this week at Del Mar carries plenty of flesh and has been light on her feet. This firmer course has given Weld pause, but Tarnawa likely handles it and wins her second Turf.
Godolphin and trainer Charlie Appleby runs two, Walton Street and Yibir. Walton Street romped in the Canadian International and has good German form that includes the Arc winner, Torquator Tasso, but top stable rider William Buick lands on Yibir (James Doyle on Walton Street, of course, is highly competent) and Appleby, for what it’s worth, played down Walton Street’s win chances this week. Sevenyear-old Walton Street blossomed this year into a horse he’d never been, but this Canadian International came up soft and Walton Street will not be making an easy lead Saturday with Acclimate and Tribhuvan in the Turf.
Yibir, Appleby said, was the stable’s leading 3-yearold 1 1/2-mile hope early this spring, which says a lot since Adayar, who won the Derby, and Hurricane Lane, a close third in the Arc, both were in the yard. Yibir can be a bad boy and thus was gelded during the season, but he has progressed and could improve upon his winning Belmont performance over lesser competition in the Jockey Club Invitational.
Aidan O’Brien brought four over for the Turf, but Bolshoi Ballet and Mogul are also-eligibles while Broome and Japan look underqualified. Broome likes to race forwardly but won’t have the pace to stay with the front-runners, and while he’s much better than what he showed in the Arc he’s probably not good enough to win.
Teona and Sisfahan merit attention at double-digit win odds. Teona, who likely winds up a better horse next year at age 4 (provided she stays in training), is strictly a firmturf sort of filly who was held out of the Arc to try California instead. The O’Brien-trained Oaks winner Snowfall came into the Prix Vermeille favored to win the Arc but came out of it beaten by Teona, who is 2 for 2 over courses with “firm” in their designation.
Three-year-old Sisfahan won the German Derby in July and while second and third in his two tries with older rivals, he not only ran into Torquator Tasso but also hooked the English filly Alpinista, a talented Group 1-level performer.
Mile
Runners: Master of The Seas, Mother Earth, Pearls Galore, Real Appeal, Space Blues, Vin de Garde
Space Blues is very legitimate – it’s just a question of whether you want to take something like 3-1, his morning-line price, on a closer facing 13 rivals on a tight course with a relatively short run from the top of the homestretch to the wire.
The mile distance probably will not trouble a 5-year-old whose best form has come in France and England going 6 1/2 or seven furlongs. Space Blues began his career in a one mile and 70-yard race and ran as far as 1 1/4 miles in his early days before Godolphin and Appleby figured out that he wanted to race over shorter distances. Top one-mile races in Europe require just a little more staying power than Space Blues possesses, but the rule of thumb holds that a horse, like Space Blues, who can finish strongly in the seven-furlong Prix de la Foret can win a topclass American mile, especially over a smaller course like Del Mar’s. No less a BC Mile star than Goldikova won the Foret on the way to her 2010 Mile win.
Mind you, Space Blues is no Goldikova, and even though Space Blues has Timeform ratings of a Group 1 horse dating to 2019, it’s okay to be a little skeptical – especially with so many other capable Euros.
Pearls Galore beat everyone in the Foret save Space Blues, who did put two lengths on her, but she’s more a proven miler than he, and while Space Blues handles all course conditions, especially wet, Pearls Galore, according to trainer Paddy Twomey, distinctly prefers firm going. The filly has improved several lengths through the course of this
season and might have won the Group 1 Matron going lefthanded at Leopardstown had she come off the rail earlier in the race. She just might have enough speed to get a good early position from post 12, and while jockey Billy Lee is obscure to an American audience, he’s her regular rider.
To be fair, Mother Earth, third in the Matron, likely finishes in front of Pearls Galore if not badly impeded by her own stablemate when trying to make a run in the final quartermile. She never found room in that race, finishing third, and after a solid second in the Sun Chariot she was a much betterthan-it-look fifth in the Queen Elizabeth II.
Seventh in the QE II was Master of The Seas, who could not abide all the cut in that ground and goes best on firm turf like Del Mar’s. Master of The Seas’s near miss in the 2000 Guineas shows he has the talent to contend in a race like the Mile, but he has barely started this season and from post 1 racing 13 foes on foreign ground probably is not psychologically up to the task.
Vin de Garde’s Timeform ratings make him look more qualified for this race than he might actually be.
Filly and Mare Turf
Runners: Acanella, Audarya, Love, Loves Only You, Ocean Road, Queen Supreme, Rougir
Audarya, upset winner of this race last fall at Keeneland, has plenty of company in a strong overseas contingent entered in the Filly and Mare Turf, and she drew poorly in post 12.
Audarya is winless in four starts since last year’s Breeders’ Cup but brings slightly softer form to Del Mar than she did to Keeneland. She was beaten a whisker in the Group 1 Romanet, a race she’d won in 2020, but turned in that race’s fastest 200 meters, 11.23, before being run down by Grand Glory, who returned to lose the Group 1 Prix de l’Opera by a nose to Rougir. Audarya did make a fine impression training
this week but do not forget that the 2021 Filly and Mare Turf is longer than last year’s renewal – perhaps slightly too long.
If this were September 2020, not November 2021, Love would be favored not only here, but in the Turf, so strong was her 3-year-old form a year ago. She’s not turned out to be the horse her early 2020 performances suggested, but it’s all right to like Love in this race. Trainer Aidan O’Brien has said all along this is a firm-turf filly, and that kind of ground is not so easy to find overseas. She did beat Audarya in her season’s debut before squaring off against a few of Europe’s best middle-distances horses, and she gave weight to a good filly when beaten at odds-on last out. You have to consider her.
Japan-based Loves Only You also rates a serious chance. She was beaten two necks – by Mishriff and fellow Japanese mare Chrono Genesis, a top-level performer – in the Sheema Classic at Meydan this past March, just failing to see out a 1 1/2-mile distance she won’t have to worry about in this 1 3/8-mile contest. She’s training with aplomb but can’t afford to fall too far behind what projects as a moderate pace.
Rougir won the Win and You’re In in the Opera, and trainer Cedric Rossi said immediately after the race that his filly handles all course conditions and would suit American racing. Her form, however, suggests she excels on a softer course than Del Mar’s, and Rougir has raced seven times already in 2021.
Acanella is a mildly interesting longshot for Irelandbased trainer Ger Lyons since she exits a strong race, the Group 1 Matron, that at one mile was too short for her and in which she had compromising trouble.
Queen Supreme in January won the Cartier Paddock Stakes at Kenilworth in South Africa, part of the Breeders’ Cup Challenge Series, and she’s guaranteed a spot in this field despite finishing seventh at 22-1 in her lone subsequent start, the Joel Stakes on Sept. 24 in England
for new trainer Andrew Balding.
Turf Sprint
Runners: A Case of You, Glass Slippers, Emaraaty Ana
Glass Slippers won this race a year ago, which is fresh in Breeders’ Cup handicappers’ minds and might obscure the fact this is one BC grass race Americans have dominated. The reason for that is obvious: The Turf Sprint is run around a turn and major overseas races contested at five or 5 1/2 furlongs are run on straight courses.
A Case of You is the BC Challenge winner among this trio, his Prix de l’Abbaye victory Oct. 3 at Longchamp earning guaranteed fees-paid entry into the Turf Sprint. A Case of You really shined in the Abbaye, where he somehow ran down Air de Valse, who had opened a wide lead with a 1 1/2 furlongs to run. Air de Valse got his final 200 meters in 12.69, second-fastest in this 14-runner field, so he wasn’t stopping, but A Case of You went 12.19 to get up by a nose. A Case of You won well going around a turn on the allweather track at Dundalk this past spring and his trainer, Ado McGuinness, is confident the Del Mar bend won’t trouble him.
Glass Slippers won the 2019 Abbaye over a course rated soft and was a close second in 2020, when the turf was called heavy, but trainer Kevin Ryan said this year’s heavy course just was too deep for the mare, whose feet went into the muck and didn’t come out. Ryan also said his mare “followed the wrong horse and made the front too soon” finishing third, just behind A Case of You, in the Flying Five Stakes. We know she can handle an American course, but is she the same horse this year?
Ryan also runs Emaraaty Ana, who comes off easily the best two races of his career, both down a straightaway. He has run a turn once, finishing third at Chester in August 2020, but Ryan said he trains around a bend every morning, and that the firmer a turf course is, the more Emaraaty Ana likes it.
Distaff
Runner: Blue Stripe
Blue Stripe qualifies as an international since she never has raced in North America, but she arrived in Southern California not long after capturing the Gran Premio Criadores on May 21, which guaranteed her a spot in this field as part of the Breeders’ Cup Challenge Series. Her half-sister Blue Prize won the 2019 Distaff at Santa Anita, but that was at the end of her third season of racing in the United States after she, like Blue Stripe, began her career in Argentina. This filly has some route speed and has used it to obtain forward position in her races, as in the Criadores, where she stalked the leaders, won a stretch-long duel with eventual third-place finisher Mahagonny (who returned about a month later to win the Group 1 Gran Premio Estrellas Distaff), and held off a late surge from Soviet Catch, an 84-1 shot. She’s 4 for 4 on dirt.
Dirt Mile
Runners: Jasper Prince,
Pingxiang
It’s hard to make a case for either of these Japanese horses winning, but one could make a case they could prove pace factors, possibly to the detriment of favored Life Is Good. Jasper Prince disputed the pace in the 2020 BC Sprint and faded to 14th, and never has run this far on dirt. Pingxiang, who had a very fast dirt work Tuesday morning and often goes to the lead in his races, won well enough over seven furlongs in his last start, but finishing second there was an 8-year-old with one victory from his last 18 starts.
Sprint
Runner: Matera Sky
This Japanese 7-year-old you might remember from his start in the 2019 BC Sprint at Santa Anita, where he finished eighth. His main claim to fame is two excruciatingly close seconds in the rich Riyadh Dirt Sprint in Saudi Arabia.