This Side Up: Classic Winners Share Unexpected Springboard

Which 2-year-old race, in its last two editions, has yielded not only a Preakness winner and a Travers 1-2, but also consecutive winners of the Epsom Derby?

On the face of it, the fact that both Anthony Van Dyck (Ire) (Galileo {Ire}) and Masar (Ire) (New Approach {Ire}) failed to disclose their full potential might suggest that the GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile Turf wasn't really an ideal test. Scuttling round those bends at Churchill and Del Mar, neither had the necessary zip: Masar was delayed in his run before finishing well for sixth, while Anthony Van Dyck could never get involved in ninth. But who can say what incidental benefits they derived from the experience?

Albeit the Europeans were gratified by the introduction of these races to the Breeders' Cup series–in 2007 for colts, the following year for fillies–the most powerful stables proved reluctant to send their very best youngsters on such a long trip at the end of the year, with their domestic Classics looming early on the spring horizon. Instead, given the perceived vulnerability of the indigenous turf horses, the race was treated as an opportunity to give Grade I stud profile to animals that might struggle to break out of the second tier in Europe.

In the event, however, several returned home having palpably learned valuable lessons. Lancaster Bomber (War Front) had been serving as pacemaker for the champion juvenile in Europe before he was sent to Santa Anita in 2016, having held out for second at 66-1 when favoured by the rail in the G1 Dewhurst S. He was given a different view of his vocation at the Breeders' Cup, finishing strongly from off the pace for second.

The following year Lancaster Bomber was runner-up, beaten around a length, in both the G1 St James's Palace S. and the GI Breeders' Cup Mile, and looked better than ever as a 4-year-old, winning the G1 Tattersalls Gold Cup, when unfortunately retired. As such, his career helped to correct European misapprehensions both about his sire–whose best stock, over there, had hitherto majored in precocity–and about extending a young horse's first campaign to the Breeders' Cup.

In 2017, his trainer sent over another American-bred colt, Mendelssohn (Scat Daddy), who had similarly appeared to surpass expectations on his latest start as 50-1 runner-up in the G1 Dewhurst S. The field he beat at Del Mar included not just Masar, but also: Catholic Boy (More Than Ready), who would beat Mendelssohn into second when switched to dirt in the GI Travers the following summer; My Boy Jack (Creative Cause), subsequently fifth in the Kentucky Derby; Flameaway (Scat Daddy), another to do well on the main track at three, a Grade III winner and second in three Grade IIs; Sands of Mali (Fr) (Panis), who confirmed himself one of Europe's fastest in winning the G1 Qipco British Champions Sprint; and James Garfield (Ire) (Exceed And Excel {Aus}), who also did well back in Europe, a G2 winner and beaten half a length in Group 1 company. Mendelssohn himself, of course, won the G2 UAE Derby by half the track and would surely have added a Grade I on dirt in the U.S. had he been ridden somewhat less manically.

Aidan O'Brien, trainer of Lancaster Bomber and Mendelssohn, has achieved similar dividends with fillies. Take Alice Springs (Ire) (Galileo {Ire}), beaten in all four Group starts before trying her luck at Keeneland in 2015. Though failing by under a length to overcome a slow start that day, she proceeded to win three Group 1s as a sophomore.

But whatever Anthony Van Dyck and Masar learned in the Juvenile Turf–how to roll up their sleeves and look after themselves, at close quarters; how to handle twists and turns–what is really interesting is the transferability of the kind of seasoning this kind of test provides. For the examples of Mendelssohn and Catholic Boy have been surpassed, this time round, by the graduation of War of Will (War Front), fifth at Churchill last fall, to win the GI Preakness.

This doesn't only remind me, yet again, how people are far too prescriptive in dividing turf and dirt horses, typically not even according to a horse's stride or style but on the self-fulfilling basis that his sire-line has a given reputation. (Perhaps the clumsiest example, this, of the pernicious tendency in this business to reduce a living, breathing animal to systems or formulae.) It also offers food for thought, when you compare the notoriously weak record of the GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile as a Classic signpost.

While proposing no kind of agenda, regarding our ever more urgent vigilance over surfaces and welfare, perhaps we should be a little more receptive to the possibility that certain adolescent horses might lay more sustainable foundations for a dirt career by learning their trade on turf. While the Derbys at Epsom and Churchill plainly showcase different strengths, they nonetheless share a common base. Not just in terms of sheer class, and the ability to carry speed, but also in the physical and mental equilibrium to cope with an unusually hectic racing environment–whether the traffic chaos of one, or the bewildering track layout of the other.

So if the turf race tends to be more of a crapshoot, with horses weaving for a run as they go up the gears, then perhaps that will sometimes do a developing horse more good than putting his whole system under merciless strain from a long way out, as might more typically happen in the dirt championship.

That won't be true of every horse, naturally. And obviously these races are meeting their brief primarily in producing champions like Lady Eli (Divine Park) and Rushing Fall (More Than Ready). But their impact on some far more venerable events, over the past couple of years, suggests that this relatively new option for a Classic prospect is maturing into a rather broader platform than anyone might have envisaged.