Breeders’ Cup 2023: Post Positions, Odds, And What Arcangelo Will Have To Do From The Rail
The $28 million Breeders' Cup race week got truly underway at the gargantuan post position draw in Pasadena, California, on October 30, as Arcangelo and his connections found themselves assigned to break from the rail and rated a somewhat surprising second-favorite in the morning line, at 7-2. He was — significantly or not — absent from the track on Monday as a result of his irritated left hind hoof, which, despite a careful re-shoeing, has inspired more than a little trackside chatter over the last two days.
Calm at the eye of the storm around her horse, Arcangelo's level-headed trainer Jena Antonucci is resolutely hewing to her imperturbable style. She told the press: “It seems like everyone is quite stressed about this horse. We’ll be patient, always put the horse first.”
Not bothered by her athlete's seeding in the morning line, she did spare a word about Arcangelo's challenging post position to the Associated Press, saying, "He's won from the one (hole) before."
Arguably bigger headline to come out of the massive event at 7:45 p.m. ET was the fact that Bob Baffert's Arabian Knight had in fact bested his rival Arcangelo on both counts: At 3-1 in the track's morning line, he will be breaking comfortably from the far outside, from stall 12 in the Classic's thirteen-horse field.
But before we get into the ins and outs of that field, and whether the Ushba Tesoro, who seems rather highly thought of by the Santa Anita oddmakers at 4-1, deserves his slot in the morning line, herewith, the post positions and odds for the 40th running of the Breeders' Cup Classic.
(Horse, Trainer, Jockey, Morning Line Odds)
1) Arcangelo, Jena M. Antonucci, Javier J. Castellano, 7-2
2) Zandon, Chad C. Brown, Frankie Dettori 1st, 2023 Woodward G2 12-1
3) White Abarrio, Richard E. Dutrow, Jr., Irad Ortiz, Jr., 4-1
4) Missed The Cut, John W. Sadler, Luis Saez 1st, 30-1
5) Derma Sotogake, Hidetaka Otonashi, Christophe Patrice Lemaire, 20-1
6) Saudi Crown, Brad H. Cox, Florent Geroux, 12-1
7) Clapton, Chad Summers, Tyler Gaffalione, 20-1
8) Ushba Tesoro, Noboru Takagi, Yuga Kawada 1st, 4-1
9) Senor Buscador, Todd W. Fincher, Geovanni Franco 3rd, 30-1
10) Dreamlike, Todd A. Pletcher, Jose L. Ortiz, 30-1
11) Bright Future, Todd A. Pletcher, John Velazquez 1st, 10-1
12) Arabian Knight, Bob Baffert, Flavien Prat, 3-1
13) Proxy, Michael Stidham, Joel Rosario, 12-1
(Source: Santa Anita, 10/30/2023)
As Arcangelo is about to learn on Saturday, drawing the one-hole is never good, but neither does it spell certain doom for any horse in any race. The Breeders' Cup Classic is not a juvenile rugby scrum like the Kentucky Derby, with twenty other horses, who may or may not be freaking out as a result of the infamous Derby jitters, crashing down you in a thunderous moment after the gates slam open. But, in this 40th running of the Classic, with a large field of thirteen this year, it will be a rough go for the first two-to-three furlongs.
Those two-to-three furlongs will be of paramount importance to Arcangelo and his rider, Javier Castellano. Arcangelo is, mentally, a surprisingly tough horse, as he demonstrated in August in the Travers, winning in the mud. He was also tough — though not as firmly favored to be so — as he won the Belmont.
Although he breaks consistently well, one possible vulnerability is that he's not particularly known as a snappy starter, tending more to have to work his way through a race. Facing a field of this size, trainer Antonucci and her rider Castellano are going to want to accelerate that so that his break is, first, clean — meaning, that he's not boxed in and in danger of getting bumped about and thrown off his game.
The kinetic architecture of every start in every horse race is different, but the guiding principal is to gain position, by which is meant for the horse to be as comfortable as he or she can be with where they are so that they can begin to get down to the real work of the race. It's what horsemen and horsewomen mean when they used the verb to "settle." Put another way, position at this point of the race does not necessarily mean to be at the front. Rather, it means Arcangelo is going to have to exhibit superior tactical speed to work through a lot more traffic than Arcangelo's connections were hoping he would have work through, so that he can get to that place in the race where he and Castellano can do the job.
Arcangelo showed us that he had one kind of focus, at an extreme distance, in the Belmont, but the Classic is the Classic. It's shorter, of course, but in its own way, with more experienced horses, it's a race that requires a special kind of wisdom from its athletes. Arcangelo will have to show us that to get by Arabian Knight.
