Today’s 89th running of the Grade 1, $750,000 Jockey Club Gold Cup at Belmont Park is the marquee event of the fall championship meet, pitting Lawyer Ron, the top older horse on the East Coast, perhaps the nation, against Preakness winner Curlin, who is stepping outside the 3-year-old ranks for the first time.
With the Breeders’ Cup World Championships at Monmouth Park less than four weeks away, today’s Gold Cup assumes added significance. This year, in conjunction with ESPN, the Breeders’ Cup has established a “Win and You’re In” series of 24 stakes at six different race tracks, dubbed the Breeders’ Cup Challenge. The winners of those races are guaranteed an automatic berth in their corresponding Breeders’ Cup races, to be run Saturday, Oct. 27, on the Jersey Shore. (Three other Cup races, new to the series this year, will be run Friday, Oct. 26.)
The Gold Cup heads a quartet of Breeders’ Cup Challenge stakes on Belmont’s 11-race card, anchoring a $400,000 guaranteed pick 4 that begins with the Vosburgh, followed by the Joe Hirsch Turf Classic and Beldame. All four Grade 1 events will be televised by ESPN (4-6 p.m.).
Victory in the mile-and-a-quarter Gold Cup earns a starting berth in the BC Classic, which, in Lawyer Ron’s case, would be redundant. That’s because Lawyer Ron, the even-money favorite on the morning line, won the “Win and You’re In” Whitney Handicap at Saratoga on July 28 by 43/4 lengths, setting a track record of 1:46.3 for a mile-and-an-eighth.
Trained by Todd Pletcher, the 4-year-old son of Langfuhr came back to win the Sept. 1 Woodward at the Old Spa by 81/4 lengths. Although he’s winless in two starts at 10 furlongs, those races were last year’s Kentucky Derby and Breeders’ Cup Classic, before Lawyer Ron morphed into the monster that’s won four of six starts this year, with a second and a third.
“His two races at Saratoga were exceptional,” Pletcher said. “His Whitney was a breakthrough performance, and I think he’s taken his game to the next level.”
Pletcher, who has another leading contender for the BC Classic, 3-year-old colt Any Given Saturday, said, “It will be interesting to see how the top 3-year-olds do stepping up in these big races. Curlin is a talented colt, and I’m sure he’s going to run well.”
Pletcher is well acquainted with Curlin, whose meteoric rise began when he won his first start in February for trainer Steve Asmussen by 123/4 lengths. Pletcher horses finished behind Curlin when he won the Arkansas Derby by 10½ lengths, was third in the Kentucky Derby, then got up late to nail Derby winner Street Street in the Preakness.
In both starts since then, Curlin has lost to Pletcher-trained runners. The filly Rags to Riches beat him a head in the Belmont Stakes, and Any Given Saturday crushed him in his last start, when Curlin ran third as the 4-5 favorite in the Aug. 5 Haskell at Monmouth.
In today’s other Breeders’ Cup Challenge races, Discreet Cat makes his long-awaited return against a solid field of sprinters in the six-furlong Vosburgh; English Channel looms a standout in the Turf Classic at a mile-and-a-half; and Ginger Punch goes for her fourth straight against fillies and mares in the mile-and-an-eighth Beldame.