Breeders’ Cup: Our event is still going to be great

Breeders’ Cup officials hope Jess Jackson will change his mind about holding Rachel Alexandra out of the 2009 Breeders’ Cup World Championships.

But even if Jackson sticks to his position that Rachel will never again race on a synthetic surface, the Breeders’ Cup, at least publicly, is not sweating the decision.

“Our event is still going to be a great event,” said Breeders’ Cup Chief Marketing Officer Peter Land. “We’ll still have 80,000 to 100,000 people come. It’s still going to be a great television show and a great simulcast product.”

Jackson disagrees with the Breeders’ Cup’s decision to hold the event at Santa Anita Park, which has a synthetic Pro-Ride surface, for a second consecutive year. Jackson does not think the results of synthetic races are legitimate, nor does he think synthetics are safer than a well-maintained dirt surface.

Land and the management at Breeders’ Cup hope Jackson will change his mind before November 6-7.

“First of all it’s early. It’s only June, so we would hope that over the course of the summer it would be a shame if Jess didn’t have a change of heart,” Land said. “We obviously respect Jess and everything he’s done for the sport. He’s certainly a great sportsman. But more than anything else, we were surprised he would make an announcement this far out.”

Thanks to the synthetic experiment, American horses currently are competing on three different surfaces – dirt, turf, and synthetic. But no racetrack offers all three, so no matter where the Breeders’ Cup is held, it risks losing stars from one of them.

Land said he does not think surface should be that big of a deal.

“Some years it’s going to favor different horses on different tracks. It’s not unlike the PGA championships, some years the course will favor long hitters and some years it will favor putters,” Land said. “I think many sports in general have this built in testing mechanism that says if you’re a great champion you can persevere under conditions that might not be ideal.”

It would be nice if Land’s comparison with golf worked, but the reality is that very few horses are the same when they switch surfaces. Some great dirt horses have struggled to compete on the synthetics or turf. Just as many great European turf stars are a shadow of themselves when they try dirt.

When Breeders’ Cup committed to Santa Anita for two years it was a controversial decision, not only because no track had ever hosted two consecutive Cups, but because of how new and untested the synthetics were. Until the current American experiment, nowhere in the world had Grade 1 races been contested and world champions crowned on a synthetic track. Even in Europe, where synthetics are preferred to dirt, all the Group 1 races are on turf, compared to just a handful of Group 3’s on the synth.

Last year Europeans Raven’s Pass and Henrythenavigator ran first and second in the Breeders’ Cup Classic (G1), the first time in the race’s 25-year history that Europeans swept the exacta. Jackson’s entrant in the race – Horse of the Year Curlin – finished a disappointing fourth. Santa Anita’s Pro-Ride surface, which anecdotally at least favors turf horses over dirt horses, was seen as playing a major role in that result.

As the move to synthetics has alienated the connections of some American horses, it has won favor with the Europeans and helped Breeders’ Cup in its ongoing quest to become a true world championship. Land said he believes the net result is positive.

“We’re gonna have 150 of the best horses in the world competing this year. Are we going to lose a few American horses? Probably. But on balance, we might end up with more than 30 horses from Europe this year, and we’re a global championship televised all over the world,” Land said. “To have more horses from outside the United States competing I think is a good thing for the Breeders’ Cup and for the sport.”