A year to the day after winning a £4,000 race at Wolverhampton, Toast Of New York was within a nose of scaling the heights of Flat racing here on Saturday when he finished second in the $5 million Breeders’ Cup Classic. Even then, there remained a chance he could become the first British-trained horse to win a Classic on dirt as the stewards called an inquiry into interference at the start caused by Bayern, the front-running winner, but the result was allowed to stand.
Jamie Spencer, who intends to retire from race-riding at the end of the season, rode an outstanding race on Toast Of New York, who is trained in Lambourn by the former jump jockey Jamie Osborne. He was quickly out of the gates and settled in second place behind Bayern, with California Chrome, this year’s Kentucky Derby winner, close behind.
It was clear from the home turn that these three horses had the race between them and they fought all the way to the wire and a head-bobbing finish of a nose and a neck.
One of the most extensive teams of European runners to travel to the meeting in the United States finally recorded its first success of the weekend in the previous race when Karakontie, trained in France by Jonathan Pease, took the Breeders’ Cup Mile. European-trained horses filled the places too as Anodin, from Freddy Head’s stable in Chantilly, beat Trade Storm, trained in Newmarket by Dave Simcock, but Toronado, the favourite from Richard Hannon’s stable, was out of the frame after running wide into the straight.
Obviously, America’s leading candidate for the race, led from an early stage with Toronado in close pursuit, and quickened into a useful lead at the top of the home straight. Karakontie and Stéphane Pasquier accelerated after him and ran him down well inside the final furlong to win by a length, before Anodin and Trade Storm completed a much-needed result for the visitors.
Earlier in the evening, it had seemed that a complete blank for the Europeans was growing increasingly likely as Main Sequence, formerly with David Lanigan in Britain but now trained in the US by the English-born Graham Motion, edged out Flintshire, the Arc runner-up, in the Breeders’ Cup Turf. Telescope, the favourite, finished fourth for Sir Michael Stoute, who had another beaten favourite earlier on the card when Dank could finish only fourth in the Breeders’ Cup Filly & Mare Turf. Michael Owen’s Brown Panther was also well beaten in the Turf.
Main Sequence was good enough to finish second behind Camelot in the 2012 Derby during his three-year-old season in Britain, but both his form and attitude had deteriorated significantly by the time he left Newmarket for Motion’s Maryland stable at the end of last season.
The change in surroundings, a gelding operation and, perhaps, the application of the anti-bleeding drug Lasix have transformed Main Sequence, however, and his latest win was his fourth in a row at Grade One level in as many starts this year. He stayed on strongly to beat Flintshire by half a length, with the outsider Twilight Eclipse back in third.
“He did everything so well and so easily today,” Motion, who moved to the US from Cambridge as a teenager, said. “It really was a great team effort and the horse has been spectacular. He’s really suited to American racing and he just gets better and better.”
Dank never looked likely to threaten the winner Dayatthespa in the Filly & Mare Turf on turf which was slightly slower than expected after overnight rain. Dayatthespa made all the running under Javier Castellano to beat the fast-finishing Stephanie’s Kitten, a stablemate of the winner at Chad Brown’s barn. Charlie Hills’s Just The Judge, in third, fared best of the British runners in the race.
“She ran really well,” Spencer, who rode Just The Judge, said. “I had a beautiful position and everything was going well first time around. Then the pace started steadying and they stacked up at the end of the back straight. It was going to be very hard to catch the leaders from there.” Dank was retired after her defeat with a career record of five wins from 15 starts and career earnings of nearly £1.5 million.
“She’s run a very game race,” Stoute, Dank’s trainer, said. “They didn’t go fast enough in the middle part of the race for her. Ryan [Moore] was a little further back than he wanted to be and had to come wide, but she’s tried as always.”
Javier Castellano, Dayatthespa’s jockey, controlled the race from the start with a beautifully-judged ride on a filly with possible stamina issues at the trip.
“I thought she could get the distance if we could get away with a slow pace,” Castellano said. “I was hoping we could go 24 [seconds], 48, one minute 13 and that’s exactly what we did. When we got to the three-quarters in 1:13 I thought to myself, “we’re going to steal this thing”, and we did.”
The Great War, a rare runner for Europe on the American dirt in the Juvenile, travelled well on the surface and appeared to have a chance on the turn for home, but faded to finish fourth as Texas Red produced a commanding performance.
For all the winner’s authority, though, thoughts immediately turned to what might have been. Texas Red had finished only third last time out behind American Pharoah, the certain favourite for the Juvenile until he was ruled out by an injury earlier in the week.
