The Breeders’ Cup was the fixture that had it all

The 2021 Breeders’ Cup at Del Mar saw racing at its brilliant best. A sequence of tremendous performances; a successful trial limiting use of the whip that did not compromise the integrity of results; television coverage by NBC that provided a gold standard for global broadcasting. The 2-day meeting had it all.

On that last point, what NBC did especially well is find the sweet spot in presenting the sport’s complexities while keeping it accessible. For years, it has been a source of frustration that the sport’s broadcasters are condescending to the viewer; while other sports let their fans into the interesting features that make sports fascinating, racing has seemed to believe that the opposite transition was necessary – playing down the novel aspects of the sport in the belief that those attracted to it are not capable of sufficient understanding.

Back to the results. To summarise what went on compactly with no loss of detail, here are the four divisions of races by age group and surface type. To show that TRC Computer Race Ratings are not some arbitrary exercise in playing with numbers but geared to real-life physical capabilities of the horses being assessed, our figures are presented alongside the Daily Racing Form’s BeyerSpeed Figures, which use a different scale but are based on the winning times:

Dirt older

CLASSIC #1 Knicks Go – Beyer 112, TRC 131

MILE #9 Life Is Good – Beyer 109, TRC 129

SPRINT #107 Aloha West – Beyer 100, TRC 118

FILLY & MARE SPRINT #112 Ce Ce – Beyer 100, TRC 115

DISTAFF #264 Marche Lorraine – Beyer 103, TRC 114

TRC Computer Race Ratings have a wider scale than BeyerSpeed Figures and measure relative merit on the global scale, rather than on the local one in the USA. Knicks Go’s Beyer is in the bottom third of Classic winners, whereas he rates as a very good one using our methodology; the algorithm likes him because of the depth of his CV and that of the three 3-year-olds who followed him home: Medina Spirit, Essential Quality and Hot Rod Charlie. 

Knicks Go is the new world #1 according to our algorithm, which has kept #8 Essential Quality above #12 Medina Spirit based on his earlier form, while dropping Hot Rod Charlie five places to #16.

Life Is Good produced an electric frontrunning effort, the second-best performance of the meeting on our figures. Beyer Speed Figures were impressed but stopped short of awarding Todd Pletcher’s imperious runner an elite figure. This is probably because he expended so much energy early. He gained 31 slots in our classifications to enter the top ten.

The two races for fillies, the Filly & Mare Sprint and the Distaff, yielded winners up to scratch, but Sprint winner Aloha West is low in our overall rankings by the historical standards of the race. Notice how poor the winning time was – worth a Beyer of 100. The disappointing Jackie’s Warrior remains the highest-ranked of the runners, though dropping ten places to #19.

Turf older

TURF SPRINT #25 Golden Pal – Beyer 107, TRC 124

TURF #29 Yibir – Beyer 105, TRC 122

MILE #11 Space Blues – Beyer 106, TRC 122

FILLY & MARE TURF #44 Loves Only You – Beyer 102, TRC 116

Newmarket trainer Charlie Appleby was world #1 even before the meeting, but his three winners cemented that position for a few weeks to come. He annexed the two most important turf races with horses we caught running to TRC 122, Space Blues in the Mile and the quirky Yibir in the Turf. The former was already highly ranked and gains 11 places, but the latter was markedly improved the way we see things and goes up 58 slots.

They were good winners but not great in a year where the turf races lacked true global superstars who delivered on the day. In particular, the top-class Irish-trained filly Tarnawa went into retirement on a low, dropping nine places to #17 as she failed to follow up last year’s brilliant win.

Together with Marche Lorraine’s shock win in the Distaff on dirt, the more expected triumph of Loves Only You in the Filly & Mare Turf is likely to catalyse a greater Japanese contingent in years to come. The quality of Japanese form has been showcased in recent years by by former TRC world #1s Contrail and Almond Eye and this should be an exciting element of future iterations of the Breeders’ Cup.

Dirt juveniles

JUVENILE #79 Corniche – Beyer 91, TRC 117

JUVENILE FILLIES #91 Echo Zulu – Beyer 94, TRC 114

The two main-track juvenile races were really good – continuing the trend of recent years. Whether Corniche graduates to a sophomore campaign to match Elusive Quality remains to be seen; another question is who will train him, given that trainer Bob Baffert is banned currently from having runners in the Kentucky Derby. He was raised 287 slots from this performance from #366.

Juvenile Fillies winner Echo Zulu recorded the faster time, but our numbers don’t think her race was as deep as the colt’s version. She has now been well placed to win three G1s and gained 71 places from #162.

Turf juveniles

JUVENILE TURF SPRINT #274 Twilight Gleaming – Beyer 84, TRC 111

JUVENILE TURF #139 Modern Games – Beyer 87, TRC 115

JUVENILE FILLIES TURF #343 Pizza Bianca – Beyer 79, TRC 110

The juvenile races on turf are the weakest group at the Breeders’ Cup. Both Beyer and our numbers reflect this, and even by the expected standards of these races these were strictly an average set of races.