Of the many factors that go into picking the winner of a horse race, whether it\u2019s a cheap sprint on a weekday or a multi-million-dollar test of stamina at the Breeders\u2019 Cup, none is bigger than recent form: Which horses ran best in the past few weeks. Who looks sharpest lately. Who seems to be tailing off.<\/p>\n
This might present a problem for fans trying to pick the winner of the Breeders\u2019 Cup Classic, the $7 million climactic event of the Breeders\u2019 Cup at Del Mar on Friday, Oct. 31, and Saturday, Nov. 1. Most of the contenders in the 1-1\/4-mile race for 3-year-olds and up have no recent form in the sense that most of us grew up with.<\/p>\n
Early favorites Sovereignty and Fierceness last competed in late August, winning impressively in major races at Saratoga and Del Mar. Defending Classic champion Sierra Leone, Journalism, Mindframe and Antiquarian also have been off since August; the first two ran solid seconds and Mindframe barely got out of the starting gate before losing his jockey, while Antiquarian scored his first major victory.<\/p>\n
The only horses among the 11 \u201cpre-entered\u201d this week for the Classic who raced more recently are Forever Young (in Japan), Baeza, Locked and Nevada Beach, all of whom needed and got wins in September and October.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not new to see top horses come into the Classic well-rested, \u201ctraining up to the race\u201d instead of tuning up in traditional preps four or five weeks out. Sierra Leone and Fierceness finished 1-2 in 2024 off 70-day breaks, the same layoff as Sovereignty is getting in 2025. What is new is seeing most of the provisional field for America\u2019s richest race join the trend.<\/p>\n
In the first two years of the Breeders\u2019 Cup, Classic winners Wild Again and Proud Truth had raced\u00a012\u00a0and\u00a0seven\u00a0days before. Incredible by today\u2019s standards, though perhaps no more so than remembering that back then pitchers went nine innings, basketball stars suited up every game and football and hockey players soldiered on with concussions.<\/p>\n
Any trainer would say he\u2019s doing what\u2019s best for the individual horse, but what explains the more widespread embrace of load management?<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s kind of the thing now. Spacing (races), they\u2019re finding, is really good with these horses. It\u2019s just an evolution of the game,\u201d said John Sadler, who has trained Classic winners both ways, Accelerate coming in off a victory at Santa Anita 35 days earlier in 2018 but Flightline having been off for 63 days in 2022.<\/p>\n
The trend toward horses racing less often at all levels of the game is widely attributed to modern breeding practices producing less-hardy thoroughbreds.<\/p>\n
Richard Mandella, whose 2003 Classic winner Pleasantly Perfect raced at Santa Anita three weeks before, acknowledges that \u201cthe horse nowadays tends to appreciate\u201d longer breaks. Mandella also says trainers have more incentive to try to make every start count.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the old days, they didn\u2019t have those (win) percentages under your name (in past-performance charts),\u201d Mandella said. \u201cTrust me, that\u2019s a big thing to do with it. If you\u2019re going bad, you\u2019re going to make sure the sumbitch is ready, you\u2019re not going to run one short.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tim Yakteen, who worked as an assistant to Charlie Whittingham in the 1990s, remembers how the legendary trainer raced horses into condition for a major race.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was probably the master at picking the target and having his horses campaign into that race,\u201d Yakteen said. \u201cBut you don\u2019t see that as much nowadays. The trend is to want that exceptional effort every time they show up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another cause, suggested by Sadler: As the public pays less and less attention to races below the level of the Triple Crown and Breeders\u2019 Cup, the success of a horse owner\u2019s year depends more on the results of a few huge races than on accumulating wins.<\/p>\n
Sadler mentions one other reason: More restrictions on therapeutic drugs.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe thing they don\u2019t talk about is they\u2019ve taken away medication,\u201d Sadler said. \u201cThe fans expect them to run just as much, but they need time to recoup. You say, \u2018In the old days the guys ran in all the preps.\u2019 Well, in the old days they had some help.\u201d<\/p>\n
The trend shows up in most of the 14 Breeders\u2019 Cup races, especially the nine for 3-year-olds and up. Of the pre-entered horses listed as favorites by the Daily Racing Form\u2019s David Aragona, six would go into races off layoffs of two months or more: Sovereignty, as well as Bob Baffert-trained Nysos in the Dirt Mile and Seismic Beauty in the Distaff, Mandella\u2019s Kopion in the Filly and Mare Sprint, Cherie DeVaux\u2019s She Feels Pretty in the Filly and Mare Turf, and Phil D\u2019Amato\u2019s Motorious in the Turf Sprint.<\/p>\n
Top horses staying in the barn certainly doesn\u2019t help to build excitement for the Breeders\u2019 Cup. The question is whether it affect the outcomes next Friday and Saturday.<\/p>\n
Top trainers can get top horses in shape without traditional prep races. But some trainers do it better than others. Statistics show Chad Brown, trainer of Classic hopefuls Sierra Leone and potential rabbit Contrary Thinking, and Bill Mott, who has Sovereignty, get some of their best results with horses coming off layoffs of 60 days or more. Some horses, too. Sierra Leone and Michael McCarthy\u2019s Journalism have taken big steps forward in races following breaks.<\/p>\n
The Classic field, post positions and morning-line odds will be set Monday. Then bettors can get serious about analyzing horses\u2019 class (starting with Sovereignty, Sierra Leone, Fierceness and Forever Young) and pace scenarios \u2013 and, maybe more important for the horses who haven\u2019t been racing, reading reports about how they look in morning workouts and gallops at Del Mar.<\/p>\n
One familiar measuring stick, the results of late prep races, is not available in this Classic. That still leaves a lot of tools in the box for handicappers to use in the next week.<\/p>\n
Follow horse racing correspondent Kevin Modesti at\u00a0X.com\/KevinModesti.<\/p>\n
Originally Published: October 23, 2025 at 1:54 PM PDT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Of the many factors that go into picking the winner of a horse race, whether it\u2019s a cheap…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":221158,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[8029,2739,3004,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-221157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-racing","tag-horse-racing","tag-latest-headlines","tag-racing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221157\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/221158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}