Breeders’ Cup Doesn’t Show Who’s Best : Winning One of Its Races Apparently Means Little in Long Run

Since the third Breeders’ Cup was run at Santa Anita last month, six of the winners and second-place finishers have come back to run again. All of them lost their subsequent starts, and most were soundly trounced. Their performance is an indictment of the Breeders’ Cup itself.

The one-day extravaganza, with seven races worth $1 million or more, was conceived to be the definitive championship event of American racing. It generated enthusiastic support from fans and horsemen and was reckoned to be an immediate success.

Yet the ultimate measurement of a race’s importance is not the hoopla surrounding it, nor its television ratings, but its results.

Races are recognized as great when great horses win them. The English Derby is the most significant race in the world today because genuine champions win it year after year; it is never decided by a fluke. In contrast, the Preakness’ importance has declined because the freaky Pimlico racing surface has helped too many undistinguished horses win it.

By this standard, the Breeders’ Cup so far has been a failure. In its first two years, it too often was won by the “wrong” horses, and evidence is already starting to suggest that many of the results at Santa Anita last month were fluky, too.

Part of the problem with the Breeders’ Cup is its late date in the racing season. Horses who have been competing in the country’s traditional, important stakes races throughout the year are frequently ready to tail off by November.

The top horses who have competed in New York’s fall championship series--Slew O’ Gold in 1984, Chief’s Crown in 1985, Turkoman and Precisionist in 1986--have all failed in the Breeders’ Cup Classic.

The winners of that $3 million event--Wild Again, Proud Truth and Skywalker--were all relatively fresh horses who gave the lone great performance of their careers on the day of the Breeders’ Cup.

This will surely change. Because of the money and prestige involved, trainers will surely start altering the schedules of their horses, campaigning them in a fashion so that they don’t peak before November.

But the major reason for the abundance of freaky results has been the uneven, unfair racing surfaces over which they have been contested. At Aqueduct in 1985, speed horses on the rail had virtually no chance; the races were dominated by stretch-runners who swooped wide on the turns.

At Santa Anita last month, the opposite conditions prevailed; speed horses on the rail dominated the events, while stretch-runners couldn’t circle the field and win.

When I wrote about the Santa Anita track bias immediately after the Breeders’ Cup, it was a semi-subjective observation. Even though front-runner horses won all the races, who was to say that they were the best horses anyway? But the subsequent performances of the horses who competed in the Breeders’ Cup has verified the unfair condition of the Santa Anita track.

One of the clearest examples was the Breeders’ Cup Sprint. Smile and Pine Tree Lane battled head-and-head all the way around the track to finish one-two. Even though they set a torrid pace, running the first half mile in :43 3/5 seconds, they were able to hold off any potential stretch-runners, such as the third-place finisher Bedside Promise. Viewed out of context, the performances of Smile and Pine Tree Lane looked sensational, but it was really the speed-favoring Santa Anita strip that was carrying them.

Later in the month, Pine Tree Lane faced Bedside Promise again, in a stake at Hollywood Park. This time, too, Pine Tree Lane chased one other speed horse, and Bedside Promise moved outside to make a run through the stretch. But now Bedside Promise was competing on a fair track, and he blew away his rival, beating Pine Tree Lane by more than five lengths.

The $1 million Hollywood Futurity also shed light on the Breeders’ Cup races.

One of the most impressive of all the winners at Santa Anita had been the 2-year-old filly Brave Raj, who accelerated powerfully along the rail and drew away to win the Juvenile Fillies by 5 1/2 lengths. Her time was three-fifths of a second faster than 2-year-old colts ran at the same distance.

Because of this strong-looking performance, Brave Raj was favored against male rivals in the Futurity, but she finished fifth in a slowly run race. One of the horses who beat her, Alysheba, had run 1 3/5 slower than Brave Raj on Breeders’ Cup day after trying to rally on the outside. That’s how much the track bias meant.

Skywalker, who had used his speed to upset Turkoman in the $3 million Breeders’ Cup Classic, also flopped in his next start. He reverted to his customary level of performance by finishing out of the money in the Hollywood Turf Cup. And the whole remainder of his career is likely to verify what a fluke his victory at Santa Anita was.

Officials of the Breeders’ Cup should be embarrassed. In the future, perhaps they should be less obsessed by hyping their event and getting good television ratings and more concerned about staging a fair, honest championship race.