Del MarDel Mar — No horse has ever trained for the Kentucky Derby outside the United States and come over to win the race.
Aidan O’Brien has tried it five times, and he sounds like he might be ready to, as they say, give it a go again.
The famed Irish trainer certainly left the possibility open Friday at Del Mar following Mendelssohn’s impressive victory in the $1 million Juvenile Turf. The colt is bred to run on dirt – his sire is Scat Daddy, a multiple Grade I winner on dirt, and his grandsire is Johannesburg, who won the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile for O’Brien and then ran eighth in the Derby.
“We had it in our head that if everything went well today, he could be a horse we could train for the Kentucky Derby,” O’Brien said.
In fact, O’Brien almost ran him in Saturday’s Juvenile, which is on dirt, but opted to keep him on turf for just his fifth career race.
“He’s a late foal, so physically he’s very big and strong, and every week he’s getting better,” O’Brien said. “We knew that he was kind of a really American dirt pedigree horse. But we felt we didn’t want to stop the progression; that’s why we left him on the grass rather than putting (him on) dirt when he wasn’t ready for it.”
Said winning jockey Ryan Moore: “I think there’s more to come from him. He’s a big, very raw horse still, and I think he will improve with racing and experience.”
Big betting numbers
The first Breeders’ Cup at Del Mar proved a success in one important place: the betting windows.
Though the crowd of 32,278 was more than 13,000 smaller than last year’s Friday crowd at Santa Anita, on-track handle was up about 29 percent (about $2 million) to $9,280,504.
The betting handle from all sources (on and off track) was $52,273,883, a 5.3 percent increase from last year and the highest for a Breeders’ Cup Friday since 2013.
All those numbers will be higher Saturday when nine Cup races (instead of four) and 12 overall races (up from 10) are contested.
Sadler still struggling
Friday was supposed to be the day trainer John Sadler ended his run as perhaps the best trainer never to win a Breeders’ Cup race. He had two strong contenders in Accelerate (Dirt Mile), who had beaten Arrogate here this summer, and Stellar Wind (Distaff), a stakes winner over the track as well.
Sadler never could have imagined what happened.
First, Accelerate got bumped at the start and never responded the rest of the race. He finished ninth in the field of 10. Then, Stellar Wind also had a poor start, got as close as third place midway through the nine-furlong Distaff, then faded to last.
Sadler, now 0-for-41 in the Cup, will have to wait until next year; he does not have a horse entered Saturday.
Ulysses scratched
Ulysses, the 7-2 morning-line favorite in today’s $4 million Breeders’ Cup Turf, was scratched Friday night “per recommendation from the track veterinarians,” Cup officials announced.
The 4-year-old Galileo colt, trained by Sir Michael Stoute, won a pair of Group I races in England this year and most recently was third in the Prix d’le Arc de Triomphe.
Beach Patrol (4-1) and defending champion Highland Reel (5-1) were the next two horses on the morning line.
Notable
— San Diego native Mick Ruis got what he hopes will be a big weekend off to a good start when One Fast Broad ($10.40) charged from last place to win the $200,345 Golden State Juvenile Fillies. The daughter of Decarchy had lost two straight turf starts since breaking her maiden on the dirt here this summer. Ridden by Corey Nakatani — who also will ride Juvenile favorite Bolt d’Oro today for Ruis — One Fast Broad covered seven furlongs in 1:24.78 and beat Spiced Perfection by a length.
— Destin, a narrow loser to Creator in last year’s Belmont Stakes, found the extra quarter-mile of the $200,000 Marathon Stakes to his liking, defeating Infobedad to give trainer Todd Pletcher and jockey John Velazquez their first stakes wins at Del Mar. Destin covered 1 3/4 miles in 2:57.77, meaning that what has to be the oldest track record at Del Mar remains standing. The record of 2:57.40 was set in 1949 by Lurline B., although no one could recall the last time a race of that distance was contested here.
— Americanize, ridden by Rafael Bejarano, won the $200,000 Damascus Stakes to open the day. Flavien Prat picked up his fourth win of the day in the final race, the $150,000 Senator Ken Maddy Stakes, aboard Belvoir Bay, trained by Peter Miller of Encinitas.
— Bejarano was uninjured when Cheekaboomboom, a 3-year-old Cal-bred gelding trained by Peter Eurton, broke down after the finish of the second race on the turf and had to be euthanized. It was the first fatality of the fall meeting.
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