American racing holds its breath for date with destiny at Breeders’ Cup
John Gosden and Santa Anita go back a long way. He set up as a trainer at the track with just three horses back in 1979, and his typically eloquent assessment of the course’s recent travails this week had an elegiac quality too.
“I remember being at Santa Anita in winters where it rained for 40 days straight,” he said. “They had a very wet winter this year and when that happens they have to seal the track, and you’re racing on the slop on to a sealed base which they then float, and it’s not a nice surface.
“They had a top track man and suddenly he seemed to have been relieved of his duties, I think he was a little expensive or something, he was a top, top man and we always had a lot of faith in him.
“And there is not the depth of horses here that there was. When I was here in the 80s, it was brimful of the top stables from the east coast as well as the west coast, very high-quality horses, and therefore you had a racing programme which was filled properly for five days a week.
“I think the trouble they’ve had is that a lot of those stables aren’t here any more, you don’t have the depth and therefore there’s a need to get people to run. Then you’re running older horses, and some have been in the claiming ranks a long time, and you’re racing on a sloppy track in a wet winter and the trackman’s not the same trackman, you just get yourself into the perfect storm.”
It was a succinct analysis of the situation at Santa Anita in the run-up to the Breeders’ Cup meeting. It is also a storm that Santa Anita has only recently turned to face, and one that could yet blow harder still.
Racing has a much lower profile in the US sporting landscape than in Britain and Ireland, and all but a small minority of sports fans do not give it a thought from one year to the next. But what everyone seems to know in Los Angeles this week, from baristas to bus drivers, is that 30 horses died at Santa Anita in the first half of the year. It is the first thing they say when you tell them you are in town for the racing.
The number seems almost imprinted on to the consciousness here, and there it is likely to remain, regardless of the attempts of Santa Anita’s management to address the issues at their track. The rate of fatal injuries has dropped since the start of its current meeting at the end of September, after Santa Anita’s management introduced a stricter regime to assess the soundness of horses pre-race. But that will not make the primetime news. If a horse dies in a Breeders’ Cup race this weekend, however, it certainly will.
Thais, an intended runner in the Filly & Mare Turf, was scratched by vets on Thursday for being “unsound”, and Santa Anita also plans to phase in a ban on raceday medication from next season, when two-year-olds will race without the anti-bleeding drug, Lasix.
The track has also been hiring. Dionne Benson, a vet with extensive experience of the racing industry, was appointed chief veterinary officer for the Stronach Group, which owns Santa Anita, in April, when public and media scrutiny of the track was at its height. She will lead a team of 20 vets at Santa Anita over the weekend, all of whom have been out on the track every morning this week, monitoring Breeders’
Cup runners at exercise.
“At the end of the day, people have to endorse what we do, or at least allow us to race horses,” Benson said this week. “We can sit here and say we’ve been doing much better than we had, but that’s not the answer. The answer is we continually have to seek to do better, and until we can report zero fatalities, we have to continue to work towards that. That is our ultimate goal and we may never get there, but it’s not going to be for lack of trying things and we’re willing to put the work and investment in to get there.”
What hangs over all of this is the knowledge that if around 600,000 of California’s 20m registered voters sign up to demand a vote on whether racing in the state should be banned, the vote will happen. And if or when voters get their ballot papers, the first thought that springs to many minds is likely to be – 30 dead horses.
“That is a potential outcome,” Benson says, “but what our focus has to be on is making racing as safe as possible. Changing medication rules, changing training policies, all of this. We could focus our energies on debating people over a ballot measure, but I think our better course is to focus energy on horse safety and putting horses first.”
Santa Anita is one of the most important and historic tracks in American racing and an injury-free Breeders’ Cup will be the overriding aim this weekend as the course sets out to redeem its reputation.
Saturday’s best bets
Old Persian (11.40pm GMT) in the
Turf may prove to be the best bet on tonight’s Breeders’ Cup card. Charlie Appleby, his trainer, has a 50% strike-rate in Breeders’ Cup races and has been aiming Old Persian at Saturday’s race for many months.
Sistercharlie, whose route to a second successive win in the Filly & Mare Turf was seemingly eased when Aidan O’Brien’s Magical did not make it onto the plane from Europe, may still not complete a famous double tonight.
This is a race with some depth and Iridessa (8.54pm), the winner of three Group One races already, is a very fair price at around 7-1 to make Joseph O’Brien only the second winner at the Breeders’ Cup as both a jockey and trainer.
Space Traveller (10.20pm) has a little to find with the market leaders in the Mile but has a much better draw than key opponents, and could put it to good use, while Code Of Honor (12.44am) is likely to take advantage if Mckinzie does not get home in the Classic.