One look at the morning line for Saturday’s Pacific Classic and it’s easy to see why four trainers opted to send their horses across the country to Del Mar.
It wasn’t (just) for the sunshine and fish tacos.
In a year where California’s crop of older distance horses leaves something to be desired, the four trainers all saw a good chance to pick up the $600,000 winner’s share of the $1 million purse. The odds reflect that: One of the shippers is favored, another is the third choice and the two others are at odds of under 10-1 in the field of 10.
There is no clear standout on paper, even among the shippers. The tepid morning-line favorite at 3-1 is Seeking the Soul, who is a rarity in that he is one of just two starters with a Grade I victory in North America. The 6-year-old has raced 27 times at nine tracks, but this the first time trainer Dallas Stewart has sent him west of Louisiana.
Seeking the Soul’s only Grade I win came in 2017 at Churchill Downs, where the following year Pavel, the second choice in the Classic at 7-2, earned his lone Grade I victory. But those two horses are a combined 0 for 11 in subsequent Grade I races.
Seeking the Soul does have bragging rights as the only horse in the field with as many as three graded-stakes wins. All three, however, came at Churchill Downs; he is 0 for 9 in stakes races elsewhere. He won the 11/8-mile Stephen Foster in his most recent start, but has tried 1 1/4 miles only once, finishing eighth in this year’s Dubai World Cup.
Pavel — trained by Doug O’Neill, who won this race in 2006 with Lava Man — also won a graded race as a 3-year-old in 2017 but has only one win in 14 races since. He has much more experience at 1 1/4 miles, although he’s never won at the distance. He was a distant second in this race last year and fourth in Dubai.
The third choice (9-2) is another shipper, Quip, who nearly beat Seeking the Soul in the Stephen Foster and owns Grade II wins in the Tampa Bay Derby last year and the Oaklawn Handicap this year. This will be his first start at 10 furlongs for trainer Rodolfe Brisset.
The other two shippers are listed at 8-1. War Story, at 7 the oldest horse in the field, has earned nearly $2.9 million in 35 starts but the Jorge Navarro-trainee has just two wins in his last 13 starts, including a fourth in the Breeders’ Cup Classic here in 2017. Tenfold won last year’s Jim Dandy and this year’s Pimlico Special for trainer Steve Asmussen, but ran a dreadful ninth in the Foster. Tenfold’s biggest asset could be his jockey: Mike Smith has won this race four times in nine tries.
In addition to O’Neill, the other trainers with Pacific Classic victories are John Sadler and Bob Baffert. Sadler, who won last year with Accelerate, will start Higher Power, who has never won a stakes race, and Campaign, who has won a pair of Grade III races this year. The question for Campaign is whether this race is too short. His shortest career victory came in a turf race last year at 1 5/16 miles.
Baffert has won this race five times and can equal Bobby Frankel’s record should For the Top pull off an upset Saturday. The 4-year-old, listed at 12-1, came to Baffert from Argentina where he won one Group I race and was second in another. But he has shown little in two starts in the U.S., finishing fourth in an allowance race in June at Santa Anita and a distant third in the Cougar II Handicap won by Campaign here last month.
For the Top will be ridden by Martin Garcia, who is the only jockey other than Smith with a win in this race — both times for Baffert, with Collected (2017) and Game on Dude (2013).
The Pacific Classic will be run as the 10th race Saturday with a post time of 6:35 p.m. The winner earns an automatic berth in the Breeders’ Cup Classic.
The full field:
1 War Story, Pereira, 8-1
2 Quip, Geroux, 9-2
3 Pavel, Gutierrez, 7-2
4 For the Top, Garcia, 12-1
5 Seeking the Soul, Velazquez, 3-1
6 Higher Power, Prat, 8-1
7 Tenfold, Smith, 8-1
8 Campaign, Bejarano, 6-1
9 Mongolian Groom, Cedillo, 20-1
10 Draft Pick, Talamo, 20-1
