Champions Day
Frankel to Champion Stakes
It’s odd, how the most likely news can be the most underwhelming.
This Frankel development feels a bit like the Mosses announcing Zenyatta would race in 2010, after she was given a retirement party post-Breeders’ Cup Classic win … and then outlining the same campaign she’d run in 2009.
Addendum: Speaking of Frankel, Zenyatta and what-could-have, Marcus Hersh tweets, “Paris would’ve been biggest racing moment since Zenyatta’s 2nd BC Classic.” Ascot is now wondering where everyone who wants tickets will sit.
An International Triple Crown
Greg Wood commenting on his column re: the Arc or America dilemma:
For as long as Champions Day sits between Paris and America, it will force owners to send a horse to two out of three, and the benefit of extra time to recover means that will, in many cases, be the events on either side of Ascot.
It’s just stupid that they should need to choose at all. Put Champions Day in the right place and you have the makings of a modern Triple Crown, on offer to a horse that can win at Ascot, Longchamp and then in America. What an achievement that would be.
Indeed! It’s hard not to like a proposed schedule that makes the Breeders’ Cup the culmination of a top-tier international season, but there’s a disjunction between audiences that weakens the likelihood of such a set-up, even if the BHA succeeded in finessing the scheduling issues involved — the BC dirt races don’t stir Euro passion, and the turf races are secondary to Americans. On this side of the Atlantic, whether Champions Day is in September or October is all the same to many fans. On the other side, the question is why bother?
The International Whole
Thoroughbred breeders have long understood the importance of foreign markets. But racetracks have remained provincial, acting as if their businesses are local. America is used to being first, biggest, best. But the new normal won’t permit that. The sport here is destined to become part of a greater, healthier whole instead of a struggling stand-alone.
Something to think about this Breeders’ Cup week.
On the Surface
And so, as it became apparent that Pro-Ride was not the answer to synthetic success, just as 3M’s Tartan had not been, I realized things had come full circle in racing, as in much of life. First, I had watched Delvin Miller’s dream for a synthetic track implode, and now Richard Shapiro’s as both visions disintegrated with their tracks.
Oh, come on.
At the fall meet midpoint, Keeneland, now in its fourth year with Polytrack, reports on-track handle has increased and that all-sources handle is barely off from 2009. Horseplayers are betting the surface. Breeders’ Cup contenders are prepping over it. The Polytrack is, as Alan pointed out on LATG, “as much of a synthetic surface success story as Santa Anita was a failure.”
But that’s not the story you’ll get, and most certainly not from DRF, which sells products as speed-biased as the old Santa Anita dirt track.
Tangentially related: At the Races blogger Matt Chapman rounds up the likely European contenders for the Breeders’ Cup. He comes up with 24 names, 19 of those for the turf races. If that is indeed the likely contingent, it’ll be off about a third from the number of 2009 European contenders, and I don’t think there’s much argument the return to a main track dirt surface isn’t a factor. Fewer Euros isn’t such a big deal this year, but I keep bringing the subject up because — as suggested most recently by the new Champions’ Day, which is marketing itself as an alternative to Churchill dirt in 2011, and the shift in breeding power to European studs, as discussed by Bill Oppenheim and Sid Fernando — it does seem as though the era of American exceptionalism, vis-a-vis dirt breeding and dirt racing, is passing. We can keep our dirt — at the price that we’ll matter less internationally in the future.
Not on Track
Commenter o_crunk, reacting to Champions’ Day:
The season is getting more incoherent with these added changes and this is coming from a fan who follows racing on an everyday basis. If the top horses are going to continue a trend of running less and less and there’s lots of choices on the menu for them, then we can expect to see unfulfilled matchups, disillusioned hardcore fans, confused newbies and guessing games when it’s time to decide who was really best since it’s clear that it will not be decided on the track.
Read his whole comment, it’s nothing but good points.
The one effect of Champions’ Day on the Breeders’ Cup seems likely to be a reduction in the number of Euros shipping; 2011 could well be a low point with the debut of the new event at Ascot and the BC again at Churchill. Such would undermine the growing internationalism of the game, or at least, the aspect that has proved so enticing to fans and bettors, the match-up of top-class Euros against the best of the American runners.
As for running less and less, Ed DeRosa suggested on Big Event Blog that the coming smaller foal crops offer an opportunity to go drug free and reduce race dates. I’d add it’s a chance to trim the burgeoning graded stakes calendar.
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Jessica Chapel writes and edits in Massachusetts. Railbird is a Thoroughbred horse racing blog published from June 2004 to July 2019. More / Contact
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