TWO-DAY EVENT HAS INTERNATIOANAL FLAIR BUT MIDDLE-AGE PROBLEMS ARISE
This year’s Breeders’ Cup World Championship races will be held over two days – Friday November 3rd and Saturday November 4th at Arcadia, California’s Santa Anita Race Course in front of the backdrop of the beautiful San Gabriel Mountains. The Breeders’ Cup turns 40 this year and like many who reach that milestone it is time for self-reflection and existential purpose.
This edition lacks the star power of other years and suffered defections from the entries taken earlier this week. It has also seen the ignominy of the marquee Classic being run earlier on Saturday’s card so as not to pre-empt a college football game on network television. This year’s edition feels stale compared to other years. It does however have a large contingent of foreign entries, including nine runners from Japan – a country that has recently emerged as a thoroughbred powerhouse. Japanese runners have excelled international races the past few years and it would be no surprise should they run well this year.
The Breeders’ Cup series of races spans two days of racing at varying distances, surfaces and categories. Its current configuration is 14 races for total purses of more than $30 million. The five races featuring two-year-olds will be run on Friday’s card with the remaining nine races for older horses run Saturday November 4th. The $6 million Breeders’ Cup Classic has an expected post time of 6:40 PM on Saturday. The races will be televised live on USA Network and FanDuel TV (formerly TVG) with the Classic being shown on NBC between 3:30 and 7 PM Eastern Time.
The Breeders’ Cup event was first run in 1984 and was created to be a televised season ending event much like the Super Bowl or World Series. Having initially eschewed television coverage for fear of giving away its product, racing found itself with a shrinking fan base and difficulty creating new fans. The traditional stakes races were televised but predicting who would run and how much interest there would be in any particular fall stakes race proved difficult and not conducive to television promotion. As a multi-race event the Breeders’ Cup was meant to assure the appearance of stars and fans. While it was originally meant to rotate among North American race tracks (and it did so in its early years) in recent years, due to a myriad of factors including weather and politics, it has alternated only between California and Kentucky.
REFLECTING ON THE BREEDERS’ CUP AT 40
Over the forty-year history of the Breeders’ Cup a number of things have changed, and the event may need rethinking. Initially meant to rotate among the country’s thoroughbred racetracks, in the most recent years the rotation has been largely among tracks in California and Kentucky. This has lessened the national celebratory feel of the series and done little to showcase the other race tracks around the country. Combined with the relatively recent expansion to a two-day format of 14 races the series feels diluted less impactful than originally envisioned.
Like most entertainment and sporting events in modern society, the Breeders’ Cup has shifted from a fan-friendly racing day to an extremely expensive on-track experience catering mostly to the well-healed or industry insiders. Ticket prices and the high rate of mutuel takeout on exotic wagers demonstrate that the focus has strayed from creating new fans and treating everyday fans to compelling races to an annual showcase for thoroughbred owners and breeders.
Its original aim of providing racing with a marquee television event has become less critical over the years as televised racing is now everywhere. In the eyes of true racing fans, the existing everyday broadcasts do a far better job than the networks which try to appeal to a novice audience, often failing to either broaden the fan base or satisfy the knowledgeable. One need only look at the dizzying hodge-podge of networks covering the 14 races to confirm the Breeders’ Cup has never really blossomed into a national television event.
However, perhaps the most deleterious effect of the modern Breeders’ Cup series comes from the willingness of Eclipse Award voters to overweigh the importance of a Breeder’s Cup victory. Many of the Breeders’ Cup connections eschew other fall stakes races content in the knowledge that a Breeders’ Cup victory is all that is required to be declared a champion or warrant a breeding career. The net result is talented horses run less often. It is hard to make the case that that is good for the sport to have talented runners race fewer times.
However, notwithstanding the infirmities that the Breeders’ Cup has as it reaches middle age, the annual flurry of first-class racing usually provides lasting memories for racing fans. Here is wishing the best luck and safety to the participants - equine and human – and for a rethinking of the event in the future.
