Everyone’s on edge. The players are getting testy. The big players are backed up against the wall, under attack.
The fireworks are shooting around three of the stars of the show — Uncle Mo, Goldikova and So You Think — and by nightfall, look for something to erupt.
All week, trainer Todd Pletcher and owner Mike Repole have been under siege on the backstretch, with critics hammering them about Uncle Mo’s fitness, breeding, foundation, ability to get the 1 1/4-mile distance of the Classic and even the wisdom of running him.
Pletcher is never publicly rattled, but he has grown weary answering the critics.
“Uncle Mo is doing as well as he possibly could,” the trainer said with a sigh. “We’re really pleased with him, the way he has trained. He’s settled in and we’re optimistic. But it’s a tall order.”
By nightfall, Pletcher, the most second-guessed man on the planet, is going to be the hero of the day if Uncle Mo wins — or the dunce of the class if the horse flops. He’s on the hook.
Freddy Head trains the French wonder mare Goldikova, perhaps the greatest icon in the Cup’s 28-year history. She has done what no other horse has done — won three straight Cup races. Today, she’s reaching for the stars with an unimaginable fourth win in her 27th — and last — start.
But she and Head have had to battle the naysayers all week. Goldikova has lost three of five races this year, including her last two, so Head has found himself having to defend her.
“She was beaten by very short margins in those races,” Head said. “Her last race [which she lost by a head at Longchamp] was very good, a record-breaking race. But she is a year older, she’s getting a bit lazier and a little heavier.”
Goldikova is a plain-jane horse, almost nondescript. But she has been trained since Jan. 1 to win today’s Mile, and Head insists she is the same horse she was years ago, always eager to run, run, run.
“I have seen horses as good as her, or maybe even better, but I have never seen or known one who has been so consistent at the top level, year after year,” Head said. “She has never had a day off in her life and she has never given me any problems, and that is astounding.”
Nevertheless, Head is nervous. The last thing he wants to see is his amazing horse lose her last race.
Of all the horsemen gathered at Churchill Downs, none is more on tenterhooks than Aidan O’Brien, the young Irish trainer, a wizard who has won just about every big race in the world (most of them many times over), but never a Breeders’ Cup Classic.
That blank has become an obsession. He has brought 11 horses to the Classic and lost with every one.
Today he will saddle yet another contender, So You Think, the so-called wonder from Down Under, which O’Brien hailed as the best horse ever to come his way.
Since then, the horse has won four graded stakes, three of them Grade 1s, and lost three. O’Brien has brought So You Think to the Classic without ever having run on dirt — and added blinkers to the mix.
“I’m very happy with him,” O’Brien said. “He’s a very seasoned horse with a high cruising speed. I’ve worked him with good horses and he just goes with them and glides away from them.”
O’Brien, a soft-spoken 43-year-old, thirsts to win the Classic. It looms so large in his mind, he conceded: “It’s one of those races you don’t even dream about winning.
“We have had so many good horses beaten in this race that I’d be afraid even to dream about winning. Maybe someday it will happen, and if it does, it will be incredible, unbelievable.”
So the Big Three are sweating out the day. For a supposedly subpar Breeders’ Cup, the emotions are running deep and hot.