By T. D. Thornton
This year's two-day lineup of Breeders' Cup races projected to be strong in terms of equine talent and deep in engaging storylines. But Friday's card, traditionally pegged as the appetizer to Saturday's main course, served up its own satisfying spread of intrigue.
Overcoming on-track adversity with meticulous race-riding tactics seemed to be the overall theme. But a lights-out display of raw power from trip-troubled 'TDN Rising Star' Liam's Map (Unbridled's Song) in the GI Dirt Mile posed a tantalizing question that won't be answered until after Saturday's GI Classic: Did we already see the most formidable racehorse in the nation?
Jockey Javier Castellano said he thought so after the win. He piloted the 4-year-old to a 2 1/2-length score in the Dirt Mile with what looked like devastating ease after a nightmare journey that included a poor start, being locked in a box all the way down the Keeneland backstretch, and having to hit the brakes several times before finally guiding Liam's Map to clear sailing off the far turn.
“I had to find the best seam for the horse, and I didn't want to squeeze the lemon early,” Castellano said. “I tried to ride with a lot of patience…He's an amazing horse. He showed he's got great skill today…When you ride the best horse in the country–I think he paid off.”
Trainer Todd Pletcher would have none of the “Did you choose the right race?” line of questioning after Liam's Map's victory, deflecting the first of what are sure to be many queries about what it might have been like to instead have thrown down against Triple Crown hero American Pharoah (Pioneerof the Nile) in the Classic.
Then, going about their business as the continent's highest-earning individual trainer and jockey have done all year, Pletcher and Castellano came back two races later to capture the featured GI Distaff with Stopchargingmaria (Tale of the Cat).
The Distaff unfolded as a mad cavalry dash from the quarter pole to the wire, with at least nine fillies and mares in contention to win it at the head of the lane and six of them lining up across the track approaching the final furlong.
The two who opted for the widest paths off the turn were left to fight it out in deep stretch, and although Stopchargingmaria and Stellar Wind (Curlin) exchanged bumps and engaged in drifting out-induced roughhousing caused by the eventual winner, the stewards saw no hard evidence to compel them to reverse Stopchargingmaria's battle-weary neck decision.
The two grass races for juveniles lived up their annual billings as wide-open shootouts among full fields of 14, and there was little doubt that the best 2-year-olds of their respective sexes won each division, despite mid-priced horses topping the exacta over the actual betting favorites in each affair.
In the GI Juvenile Turf, Hit It a Bomb (War Front) scored a convincing last-to-first neck victory in a three-way photo thanks to a ground-saving go followed by deft maneuvering through the pack by jockey Ryan Moore. The win erased substantial pre-race chatter about whether the Aidan O'Brien-trained colt could overcome the far outside post and yielding course, which Moore characterized as “loose” turf that would be called “good/soft” in Europe.
The pace-pressing win by Catch a Glimpse (City Zip) in the GI Juvenile Fillies Turf can also be chalked up to impeccable horsebacking by jockey Florent Geroux. Not wanting to get pinned down inside fully committed long-shot frontrunner Ruby Notion (Great Notion) as the tandem sprinted solo into the first turn, Geroux repositioned the Mark Casse trainee to the outside of the primary pacemaker, then settled down the tempo. Catch a Glimpse gamely had enough left late to repel a barrage of off-the-back challengers, with the top five fillies separated by barely three lengths.
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