The Breeders’ Cup Recap Nobody Else Will Write

A Different Kind of Recap

The Breeders’ Cup just ran for the 43rd time. It is closing in on half a century, and I have been to more of them than a lot of today’s racegoers have years behind them. I saw them all. I watched the event grow from one big day into the two-day production it is now.

So take this recap for what it is. You can get the winners, the payoffs and the post-race quotes anywhere. This is the other stuff. The stuff nobody puts in the press release.

The first thing that comes to mind is not about any one race. It is not a glorious day at the races anymore. It used to be about watching the best, betting on the best, and taking in the best the sport has to offer. That is not exclusive to racing. Big events everywhere have gone the same way.

It is a great presentation. It fits right in with the rest of the sporting world. But racing is different, and the difference is the whole point.

Racing is a gambling sport. No matter how many people resist that fact, it is what it is, and it is not subjective. You go to the World Series, the Super Bowl, the Stanley Cup or the NBA Finals to watch a game. You go to the races to bet. If you didn’t come to bet, you are in the wrong stadium.

The Breeders’ Cup now feels like a production put on for the participants. The bettors are just fortunate to be allowed in to watch, despite the fact that they fund the whole thing. That model may work in other sports. In racing, the bettors and the owners are the ones putting in the money. They should be recognized, and treated accordingly.

Recognized and Non-Recognized Participants

Let me be clear up front: this is not personal. I get treated very well. I sit where I want. But it is not cheap. If anything, it feels overpriced, and racing never felt overpriced when it was the Sport of Kings.

The $2 bettor, who counts, can barely afford general admission. If he is not a kid, he parks so far away he needs a shuttle to get to the gate. It is not easy for someone on in years to enjoy the Breeders’ Cup. In my view, it should not be that way.

Owners, including some limited partners, wear Breeders’ Cup participant badges. Those badges get you into the VIP and private areas. Everything is segregated on Breeders’ Cup day. The bettor is what I call a non-recognized participant. He is participating. That part is taken for granted, and it is thankless.

Take breakfast. If you are a recognized participant, you eat indoors. There is a gourmet breakfast and there are giveaways. And there is the biggest gift of all: large flame heaters in the outdoor areas where you can watch the horses train.

The non-recognized participants, you remember, the ones funding the show, need to bundle up. There are no flame heaters in their cordoned-off area. They can buy a bagel or a coffee. It is not gourmet and it is not free, even though you could argue they have already paid for it. There is not even a discount in the merchandise store.

Just the privilege of being there, while the Breeders’ Cup sits on a very large pile of reserves. Breeders’ Cup Limited’s most recent public filing shows about $123.7 million in total assets and $101.1 million in net assets. Past The Wire has written about those reserves before.

Where I come from in Brooklyn, there is a three-letter response to that, and it isn’t “thank you.” The heaters were for the people who didn’t need them.

More People, Less Money

Before we get to the races, let’s talk handle. It was down, and down considerably, despite attendance being up. That is not a good sign.

All-sources handle for the two days was $167,930,278, down 6.7% from last year at Del Mar. Attendance was 81,604, up 25%. Against 2022, the last time Keeneland hosted, handle was down about 11% (DRF).

Here is the line that should keep somebody up at night. It was the lowest two-day handle since 2020. That was the COVID year, also at Keeneland, when the grandstand was empty. A full Keeneland in 2026 bet about the same as an empty Keeneland in 2020.

The 14 Breeders’ Cup races themselves held up better, at $146.4 million, down 1.2%. The undercard took the bigger hit. Friday finished at $53.6 million after a correction.

We would need a better breakdown to pinpoint it. But I would look hard at the Breeders’ Cup and Keeneland decision to put no limits on CAW “perks.” There was no two-minute throttle like the one NYRA uses, and NYRA has the results to show for it.

At this year’s Belmont Stakes Racing Festival, CAW play fell 44.7%. Total handle still rose 1.1%, and retail handle was up 12. The everyday bettor came back when he wasn’t getting run over at the bell.

The Breeders’ Cup’s position has been that its pools are big enough not to be badly affected by late CAW money. This year’s numbers are a pretty good test of that theory.

There will be other excuses. Fields were a little smaller, with 129 betting interests Saturday against 137 at Del Mar. Weather was the excuse at the Keeneland fall meet, where handle was also down. Eight fewer betting interests don’t explain an 11% drop at the same track. If the bettor paid a handle penalty here, my bet is it was over CAW, long before it was over the weather.

It is the same pattern. The everyday bettor gets no love that way either. Not even when he takes his money and stays home.

The Scratch Sheet

If there was a star of Breeders’ Cup week who never set foot on the track, it was the regulatory veterinarian.

I believe there were 13 “RegVet-Unsound” scratches from the 14 championship races. That is the third straight year at exactly 13. Three years, same number. Either the vets have a quota or the sport has a pattern. Neither one is a great look.

The headliner was Magnitude, the Dubai World Cup and Stephen Foster winner, 6-1 in the Classic. Steve Asmussen said a PET scan showed some disruption in the suspensory fibers of his left foreleg. He was scratched Thursday and retired to stud. That is the system working. A scan found something, and a good horse went home instead of going in the gate.

The Juvenile went with six. The Distaff and the Classic went with seven each. Friday’s Race 1, on the undercard, lost four horses to vet scratches and went with four. You can call that caution. Bettors call it a short field.

These are the Breeders’ Cup race scratches I can confirm, several of them by the regulatory vets:

• Juvenile: Gaudreau, Earth Song
• Juvenile Turf Sprint: Good to Be King
• Juvenile Fillies Turf: Serena’s Ghost, Citrus Springs, Go For Launch
• Juvenile Turf: Great Barrier Reef, Man’s Best Friend
• Filly & Mare Sprint: Praying, Nooni
• Dirt Mile: Forged Steel
• Filly & Mare Turf: Evershed, Thought Process, Eccentric
• Mile: Zulu Kingdom
• Distaff: Scottish Lassie, Splendora
• Turf: Test Score
• Classic: Magnitude

Why the horses came out, specifically, we still don’t know. The Breeders’ Cup posted many of them as horses being “removed,” not scratched. Same thing, nicer word.

I made the case in Therapeutic to Whom? that a vet scratch is usually real, and the data backs that up. Scratched horses rarely come back within 30 days, and a meaningful share never race again. I support the caution. What I don’t support is the secrecy.

Show us the numbers. How many horses were flagged, how many were scanned, what was found, and what happened to them after. Then we can stop guessing. Past The Wire will be watching when the horses on this list come back, and noting which ones don’t.

Future Stars Friday

Juvenile Turf Sprint. The favorite, Libertango, came from off the pace and capitalized on an abundance of early speed. It was the first Breeders’ Cup win for jockey Billy Loughnane and trainer George Boughey.

The story of the race, though, was Paco Lopez. He cut off and clipped heels with Moonrise, ridden by Oisin Murphy. Murphy said the incident nearly caused him to take out four other horses, and he was not verbally kind to Paco afterward.

Yes, the same Paco who was given a pass on the crop violations. You remember those, the ones Stevie Wonder could see were over his head. If you need a refresher, the pictures tell the story.

Juvenile Fillies. Emphatic rode a huge early move to victory, and gave Brendan Walsh his first Breeders’ Cup win in his 14th try. That said, let’s go back to Stevie Wonder. He could see that Miss Monica, who did not get away smoothly and wound up last and far back, was much the best.

That matters. Miss Monica is trained by Bob Baffert, and by Sunday Aidan O’Brien had passed Bob for the all-time Breeders’ Cup wins record, 24 to 22. Bob still leads in earnings, $46.4 million to $40.5 million.

Juvenile Fillies Turf. Sun Goddess came in as hyped as any horse running all weekend. Aidan called her a freak, and said she could be as good as any he has ever trained. To be fair, we have heard that before, even from Aidan, and they don’t always win.

This one did. She ran 39.5 MPH in the middle of the race and 40 MPH at the end, going a mile around two turns for the first time. That is the definition of a racehorse. Green Empress chased her home again, the fourth time this year she has run second to her.

Juvenile. Hughes lived up to the favorite’s role and the hype. He stamped himself the early Kentucky Derby favorite, even though the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile has produced only two Derby winners, Street Sense and Nyquist. Hughes is the third straight Juvenile winner by Into Mischief.

Bob’s other horse, Salahudin, missed second by a head. He may wind up as good a Derby prospect as Hughes, or better.

Juvenile Turf. Aidan’s top horse, Great Barrier Reef, scratched. It mattered not. Ryan Moore replaced Christophe Soumillon on Haffner and easily eased the pain of Great Barrier Reef staying in the barn.

Championship Saturday

Filly & Mare Sprint. Ways and Means proved she is an all-time great, and that she doesn’t need Saratoga to do her best. She was awesome. She threw more dirt on the “Chad Brown is a turf trainer” nonsense than she threw kickback in the stretch.

Turf Sprint. There are two ways to beat the speed. You come from off a hot pace, or you outrun it. Bacio outran it. He was fast and impressive, just fast, the way a Wesley Ward turf sprinter is expected to be. He gave Juan Hernandez his first Breeders’ Cup win.

Another rider, Kendrick Carmouche, would get his later in the day.

Dirt Mile. Further Ado was lucky to get the bob over Owen Almighty under Flavien Prat. Both were lucky that John Velazquez came out of the gate awkwardly and lost a stirrup on Bracket Buster. Bracket Buster just may have been sneakily best if not for the disastrous beginning.

Filly & Mare Turf. It was Chad Brown again, with Kathynmarissa, consistent all year. She beat all the Europeans, coming from off the pace and outkicking them in the stretch. At $13.24, she was the biggest price of the weekend.

Sprint. T O Elvis showed what great horsemanship can do. Past The Wire readers are familiar with him. He had not run since that win at Churchill Downs on Derby Day, and he was pointed here with laser precision. He ran down Englishman, who looked home, and gave Japan its only win of the weekend and trainer Daisuke Takayanagi his first.

Mile. Kendrick rode Deterministic flawlessly, and did it the way he likes to, on the lead. He had no way of knowing he had help, and I wasn’t going to tell him at the airport. He rode too good. But the fact is Notable Speech, trying to repeat, had a rough trip and was still flying at the end, falling a few jumps short. It was the first Breeders’ Cup win for both Kendrick and trainer Miguel Clement.

I ran into Kendrick at the airport on the way home and bought him a coffee. It was one of my highlight moments of the week.

Distaff. Nitrogen was a beast. She bore out in the stretch, and Prat dove inside on Fully Subscribed to try to beat her. Nitrogen said not today. She focused enough to not just win but win convincingly. She’s a gamer, a special horse.

Turf. Benvenuto Cellini had a rough trip in the Arc and failed to show his best. Ryan Moore was given the option to stay with him or ride Diamond Necklace, the favorite, who had beaten him in the Arc. Many were surprised by the decision.

It looked like the wrong call until the eighth pole. After a rough go, and several tries to extricate himself that went nowhere, Moore finally found the seam he needed. Benvenuto Cellini exploded. It gave “The Lads” another win, and gave Aidan the record.

Classic. Sovereignty had the bar shoe he needed to train taken off, and ran like the freight train he can be in the stretch. He put the Breeders’ Cup and the rest of the field to bed. He is the seventh Kentucky Derby winner to win the Classic, and the first since Authentic in 2020.

Night night.

The Past The Wire Take

The racing was terrific. The horses were the best thing about the weekend, the way they always are. Ways and Means, Nitrogen, Sovereignty, Aidan’s record, Kendrick’s first. That part of the Breeders’ Cup is still the Sport of Kings.

Everything around the racing tells a different story. The people funding the show stood in the cold while the people being thanked sat by the heaters. More of them came, and they bet less. CAW got the same open door it always gets. And 13 horses came out on vet calls nobody will explain.

None of it is complicated. Recognize the bettor. Put a two-minute cutoff on CAW, like NYRA did, and watch retail come back. Publish the scratch data. Knock a few dollars off a coffee and a hat for the people who keep the lights on. The Breeders’ Cup can afford it. It has about $101 million reasons it can.

As a famous Brooklyn-adjacent family once put it, it’s not personal. It’s strictly business.

That’s the problem. The bettor is the business. Somebody should tell the Breeders’ Cup.