(courtesy Blood-Horse)
My remembrances of the 1995 Breeders Cup zero upon a few items: the legendary Cigar aiming to complete a 10 for 10 perfect season and the absolutely atrocious weather the few days leading up to the big day. The current 2-day format had yet to take hold in 1995 and there were only eight Breeders Cup race allowing the even to be held all in one day. The day or two before raceday were a monsoon with something close to 150mm of rain falling. Not only were there huge concerns about the condition of the dirt and turf courses, but there was obviously flooding in the area. There was talk of postponing the event for a week, perhaps running the dirt races on Saturday and turf races on Sunday allowing a day of drying, or most drastically moving the turf races to the dirt. In the end, the raceday proceeded as normal and amazingly the day was warm and comfortable.
There was tremendous anticipation for Cigar's run for history. He had been a middling turf horse who simply was exponentially better on dirt and eventually would reel off 16 straight wins traveling across all of America, Canada and Dubai. But, my favorite race of the day was the Turf and a duel between the French-trained Arc runner-up Freedom Cry and the Irish-bred import Northern Spur. Earlier on the card the John Oxx-trained Irish superstar Ridgewood Pearl smashed the field in the mile, but the race was run in 1 minute 43.65 seconds making it one of the slowest G1 turf miles ever run in recent American history. This was a hint at things to come.
Northern Spur wanted to be near the front in the Turf and stalked in second-place over an ankle-deep track running the first mile in an amazingly pedestrian (by American standards) 1 minute 45.87 seconds. At this time Freedom Cry was sitting a few lengths behind the leaders poised to pounce down the stretch. Turning for home the combatants were locked together giving every ounce of energy to drag themselves through the muck and mire. They pulled clear from the rest of the field and toiled through the final two furlongs in nearly THIRTY SECONDS. In the end, my favorite jockey Chris McCarron willed Northern Spur to a 1/2 length victory over Freedom Cry and Olivier Peslier. The first five places in the race were filled by European-bred horses.
Grab a few minutes and watch a great race: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c70S-OETygI
Let's hope this year's Turf is just as exciting.
