By TimeformUS Analyst Justin Finch
The Breeders’ Cup Classic has a field of 9 horses going a mile and 1/4 on the dirt. The clear favorite on the morning line is American Pharoah.
The TimeformUS Pace Projector shows American Pharoah (#4) on a clear and comfortable early lead, but it's even clearer now that Beholder has scratched. He is now followed by Smooth Roller and Frosted.
The pace is projected to be neither fast nor slow--Pace Projector's algorithms will rarely flag a 10-furlong dirt race as slow-paced. The fastest TimeformUS Late Pace rating in the field, a 129, belongs to #9 Honor Code.
Here is the field in post position order, with morning line odds in parentheses:
#1 Tonalist (6-1): A thoroughly professional racehorse, he is 6 for 14 lifetime. He has won three Grade 1s (including the Belmont Stakes) and over three million dollars. He has run big at today’s distance and at distances both shorter and longer than today’s. On our speed figures, he has never been better. His last five numbers are 118 121 125 122 129. He has outstanding connections. We do not believe, as one hears from time to time, that he is at his best in New York. Looking at his lifetime TimeformUS Speed Figures, we don’t believe that this knock is valid, as all of his numbers fit seamlessly with the surrounding numbers. This is an astonishingly consistent horse—a horse who always fires his shot and plainly thrives on racing. But maybe somewhere in the middle of all this praise lies our only real knock (if you want to call it that) on this colt. His very consistency, admirable though it is, works against the chances that he will suddenly fire the cannon-shot it would take to beat American Pharoah at his best.
#2 Keen Ice (12-1): This late-blooming son of the magnificent Curlin has now proven himself to be worth every second of the wait. A three-year-old season that began with him running speed figures of 100 and 97 (unspectacular figures for TimeformUS) while being soundly beaten in Grade 2s has turned into the three-year-old season in which he raced extremely wide on the first turn, emerged from between horses, and gunned down the first Triple Crown winner since Affirmed, earning a speed figure of 129 in the process. We reject the notion that he did not deserve to win the Travers. For us, handicapping Keen Ice today comes down to the following question: Is he ready to run that well again, two months after the performance of his life? We believe that the most likely result is that he goes backwards a little bit today. Maybe five points. And it seems likely that his running style will put him at a bit of a pace disadvantage. But a repeat performance cannot be ruled out, and neither can a legitimate pace, and that means that Keen Ice cannot be ruled out either. And he’ll be a price again.
#3 Frosted (15-1): Solid three-year-old was no match for American Pharoah from behind in the Kentucky Derby and the Belmont. He tried taking it to him earlier in the Travers, a race that heated up as it went on. Indeed, he put a head in front of American Pharoah as late as the top of the stretch, only to be decisively repulsed by that one. We expect Frosted to take back a bit today, as he did in his Pennsylvania Derby tune up. He draws a favorable post. Rosario figures to have him in a good early spot in a race that figures to spread out a bit in the front half of the field. But is he good enough if one of the favorites truly fires? We doubt it.
#4 American Pharoah (6-5, but will go shorter with Beholder out):
This colt is deservedly going into the history books as an all-time great, no matter what people thought of him before this race, and no matter what they think of him after this race. That is one of the privileges that come with being the first horse since 1978 to win the Triple Crown: what your critics think of you ceases to matter. The main question here, in the historical sense, is whether American Pharoah can add a little bit more luster to his career record in this his final race and only attempt against older horses. When he fell short in the Travers, there was a lot of talk about what supposedly went wrong. As we hinted above, we don’t think that anything went wrong with American Pharoah in the Travers. He ran his usual race, which is to say he ran a superb race. He was pestered quite a bit on the lead. He ran slightly too fast early for his own good. And he lost by less than a length to a horse who fired a huge shot and didn’t get the easiest trip in the world himself. Today, American Pharoah figures to receive no pace pressure. He consistently runs the best TimeformUS Speed Figures in the field. He has no end of class. He has been training in fine fashion for a trainer who has no superior when it comes to training horses up to races. There is nothing left for American Pharoah to point at. No racing future to plan for. What he has left, we will see today, and it will probably be sufficient to win this race.
#5 Gleneagles (20-1): Classy, splendid Irish grass horse has amassed a boatload of accomplishments in Britain and Ireland. For that he has our undying respect. But in making his dirt debut today, in the BC Classic, he is not playing his game. He is playing Beholder’s game. He is playing American Pharoah’s game. And we really doubt that he will come close to playing it at their level. But you have to admire his connections for deciding that this is a question best settled on a racetrack.
#6 Effinex (30-1): His best is not good enough, and there is a good chance we will again see something less than his best.
#7 Smooth Roller (15-1): On paper he made a big jump to a lifetime-best performance in winning the Awesome Again in the fourth start of his career. However, he had such a brutally awful trip in a cheap stake a month earlier that we believe that as a practical manner, he is best seen as a young horse whose race-to-race development is a bit smoother than his speed figures of 96 108 111 124 imply. In any case, this is a horse on the improve. Although he is four years old, he is by a good distance the most lightly raced horse in the race. His trainer, Victor Garcia, is a competent trainer who has not made much noise outside of California. Is Smooth Roller ready for this sort of competition? Well, after breaking a trifle slowly, he received a friendly trip in the Awesome Again, tracking an over-the-top Bayern in slow fractions, taking over when asked, and winning off in a manner that seemed to surprise even his rider. Since then, he has had two workouts in California and minimal activity in Kentucky (which has set tongues wagging). Our feeling, based more on a gut feeling than on anything we can articulate persuasively, is that while he can certainly give a decent account of himself today with his best effort, he is not ready to ship to Kentucky and look American Pharoah in the eye in the stretch of the Breeders’ Cup Classic.
#8 Hard Aces (15-1): Toss.
#9 Honor Code (6-1): Twice a Grade 1 winner, his Metropolitan was one of our favorite performances of the season. Yes, he got a nice setup that day, but few horses could have capitalized on it in such a manner—capitalized on it with such devastating finality—as he made a run so riveting that we lost all interest in watching any of the other horses in the race. He earned a speed figure of 123 for that one-turn mile. He followed this up with a 124 while winning the Whitney while getting a near-perfect setup. We preferred Honor Code's Metropolitan over his Whitney, and we preferred his Whitney over his Kelso. His Kelso is a hard race for us to shake. Yes, it wasn’t the goal. Yes, it was in the slop. But he had run well in Belmont slop previously, and his rider was asking him in the Kelso, and he wasn’t answering. He does have the fastest Late Pace rating in this field. If somehow he gets a decent pace to run at, can he turn it around? Of course he can, but we’d want a bit more than 6-1 before betting on it happening.
Beholder (3-1): SCRATCH (but worth a read anyway) A pure, pristine, old-fashioned (pick your code word) horseman of the very highest rank, Richard Mandella has been developing and maintaining horses with unsurpassed patience and brilliance for many decades now. Indeed, he is a prime example of one of racing’s greatest charms: its human continuity amidst all the surrounding uncertainty. And we doubt that he has ever done a better training job than he has done with Beholder. At this point, we’ve written up this peerless mare so many times that we now feel justified in skipping the reintroduction and coming right to the point: This five-year-old mare with a massive bankroll and endless list of accomplishments ran the best race of her life in the Pacific Classic at Del Mar in August. She followed it up with a geared-down prep (writ large) in the Zenyatta in September. If she returns to the level of her Pacific Classic today, she can beat any of these horses—including American Pharoah at his very best. But there is a Law of Gravity at work in horse racing, and this goes double with five-year-old mares, and it very much works against the chances that Beholder and her Hall of Fame trainer can dig down and find a way to duplicate what was a Pacific Classic for the ages. And if, as seems probable, she does fail to duplicate it, we will hear a lot of talk about how she doesn’t travel well, can’t run her best outside of California, etc. We see little evidence for this theory. Accordingly, we will reject it in favor of our own theory: She lost the 2015 Breeders' Cup Classic because she was a victim of her own brilliance.
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