Open vault and best will join competition
One of the goals of the Pegasus World Cup Invitational is to keep horses racing longer instead of retiring to stud like Triple Crown winner American Pharoah did after his 3-year-old season.
The purse of $12 million last year kept 4-year-old Arrogate around for one more season and 6-year-old California Chrome for one more race. The $16.3 million purse for Saturday’s event at Gulfstream Park in Florida attracted the first five finishers from the 2017 Breeders’ Cup Classic in a field of 12.
“It’s how you keep older horses running at a higher level,” said Tim Ritvo, chief operating officer of the Stronach Group, which designed the Pegasus World Cup. “The $16 million purse helps because people have had a tendency to avoid each other.”
Last year, Arrogate followed his Pegasus victory with an amazing last-to-first win in the $10 million Dubai World Cup. But his superstardom faded as he lost his final three starts including a dead-heat for fifth in the Breeders’ Cup Classic.
This year the star clearly is Gun Runner, who missed the Pegasus last year because of a quarantine at the Fair Grounds in New Orleans where he trained. He then finished second in the Dubai World Cup before reeling off four straight authoritative Grade 1 victories including the Breeders’ Cup Classic.
For Gun Runner — 2017’s Eclipse Awards Horse of the Year — Saturday’s 11⁄8-mile race will be the 5-year-old horse’s final start before he retires to stud at Three Chimneys Farm.
“With this being his last race, there are a lot of emotions from the whole team,” trainer Steve Asmussen said. “He’s truly a special horse, mentally and physically. We’ve been on a tremendous run with him – how he’s stepped up when called upon and met the challenge and got it done.”
Gun Runner drew post No. 10, which is something of a disadvantage at Gulfstream Park. With a short run-up to the first turn, horses from posts 9-14 have won just 11 of 238 such races.
His main competition all drew inside, including the four horses he beat in the Breeders’ Cup Classic: Collected, West Coast, War Story and Gunnevera. The other major foe is the speedy Sharp Azteca, who is stretching out from his best distance of 1 mile.
“It is unique for this caliber of race to be in January,” Asmussen said. “We had targeted the Breeders’ Cup Classic, so this is unique. His Classic performance under the circumstances the way the track was playing was probably the best of any horse I ever had.”
Gun Runner ran on the inside part of the track in his front-running Classic victory at Santa Anita, where the outside was the much better part of the surface.
“I very much want Gun Runner to go out the way he deserves,” Asmussen said. “To go out on top and be heralded the way he was after the Breeders’ Cup Classic.”