Irish trainer Aidan O’Brien liked the look of So You Think, his 5-1 challenger in Saturday’s $US5 million Breeders’ Cup Classic, after checking out the horse at the barn on Thursday.
Uncle Mo is 5-2 favourite in the 1-1/4-mile (2000m) Classic, the top event in the two-day card of 16 races, with filly Havre de Grace at 3-1 and O’Brien’s horse edging Flat Out (6-1) among the field of 12 in the feature.
“I’m very happy with the horse,” O’Brien said.
“He’s a very relaxed horse in his races and sometimes can become too relaxed so we put a pair of blinkers on him just to try and make him concentrate a little bit more.”
So You Think will run with blinkers for the first time in two years since a race at Flemington in Australia.
The showdown could decide the season’s top three-year-old, with the US Triple Crown races producing three different winners.
Uncle Mo, unbeaten as a two-year-old in 2010 and winner of last year’s Breeders’ Cup Juvenile at Churchill Downs, was pulled out of the Kentucky Derby in May with an illness later diagnosed as a life-threatening liver ailment.
The colt returned to racing in August and along with stablemate Stay Thirsty galloped 1-1/4 miles on Thursday.
“If Stay Thirsty or Uncle Mo were to win, they would make a very good case for themselves,” trainer Todd Pletcher said of the Horse of the Year battle.
“It has sort of been one of those years when some horses have had a hard time putting together a lot of victories, so this one’s going to carry monumental weight.”
Trainer Bob Baffert’s four-year-old gelding Game On Dude, the winner of the Santa Anita Handicap who is at 10-1, galloped an easy mile (1600m).
“He’s a ‘Plain Jane,'” Baffert said.
“He just goes around there nice and easy and does his job. He’s a really cool customer. He just gets around there like it’s no big deal.”
Scooter Dickey, Flat Out’s 70-year-old trainer, had his five-year-old gallop 1-1/4 miles on Thursday and expressed hopes for the horse’s chances in a wide-open field.
“It’s shaping up to be a really good race,” he said.
“None of us are really shadowing the other. We’ve all been beat by one or another and they’re all running real good right now.”
AFP AAP TURF
