Breeders’ Cup Classic 2023: Who Is The Baffert-Trained Top Favorite Arabian Knight?

Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert, based in and having made a significant chunk of his early career in California, has won the Breeders' Cup Classic four times. Many trainers go a lifetime without having won the Classic once. This deep experience will count for a lot as we near post time for the $6-million race on Saturday afternoon, but Baffert's long California residency and his famous horse sense is also key to the apparent frictionless ease with which Arabian Knight's campaign has led to this historic point, a possibility for a fifth Classic win.

Put fractionally, if Arabian Knight succeeds on Saturday, Bob Baffert will have won one-fifth of every Breeders' Cup Classic ever run.

But before we dissect Arabian Knight's unusual career and his path into the Classic, herewith, a refresher on the results of yesterday's morning-line and the draw:

(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)

A good way of thinking about the Classic's post position draw is to say that in the heady mix of older and younger talent drawn by the Classic, by definition there just is no enormously advantageous post position. There are plenty of more or less disadvantages to each stall in the gate. That noted, in Arabian Knight's stall, No. 13 in a relatively large field of fourteen runners, there does exist a marginal sort of luxury and just a smidgen less worry in having only one other horse to his outside. It's a skinny positive. It means that, after they get off, Arabian Knight and Flavien Prat can concentrate more fully on their work of weaving themselves into the fabric of the race.

Top favorite or no, it's forever inadvisable in racing to declare absolute victory, but it does behoove us in race week to drill down into the specifics of all the favorites' talents and vulnerabilities. To say that Arabian Knight is lightly raced is an understatement worthy of Baffert. To date, the colt has had four starts, two of which were Grade 1, one of which was a Grade 3.

He broke his maiden at last November's Keenland meet, on November 5, in a 7-furlong race for which he earned rather high speed figures. His first stakes race was, also, his first stakes win, and that came at Oaklawn Park in January, but his (97) speed figure left something to be desired. For that and a few other reasons that Baffert and his team unearthed during subsequent training, the trainer opted to bring the colt along slowly, rather than subject him to the vicissitudes of a Triple Crown campaign. Arabian Knight is the definition of an outlier. He's three, but in a very real way, he isn’t even a member of the Class of 2023.

Another way to say this is to say that Baffert took time to grow the horse a bit more organically, in the hope that Arabian Knight would find himself along the way and could, just possibly, aim for the bigger post-Triple-Crown races. That has proven out this week. One astounding fact: All four of Bob Baffert's record four Breeders' Cup Classic wins have been with three-year-olds.

And all of that leaves us with several larger questions about the horse that his light racing career has not yet had the opportunity to answer. Those answers will have to wait until Saturday afternoon, but in the meantime we can read some of the tea leaves Arabian Knight has scattered for us in his last two races, the Grade 1 Haskell at Monmouth in late July, and the Grade 1 Pacific Classic at Del Mar in early September. Those back-to-back Grade 1s are the hallmark of a campaign on the march, and significantly, in both of them he raced against Geaux Rocket Ride (who was himself being pointed at the Breeders' Cup Classic).

In the one-and-one-eighth-mile Haskell, won by Geaux Rocket Ride, Arabian Knight ran an honorable third, and it's important to remember here that, prior to this stakes, he had had just two races in his life. In the Haskell he was goaded along by longshot and somewhat speedhorse Awesome Strong, who contested the frontrunning Arabian Knight for the lead early, pushing him and wearing him out. Geaux Rocket Ride brought his customary run and mopped up the pieces.

By contrast, Prat and Arabian Knight made a point of trying to exert a stronger measure of control over the speed of the race from the beginning of the Pacific Classic. They did that, and it helped Arabian Knight save energy, and ground, and took him to the win, despite a game attempt at a rundown by Geaux Rocket Ride in the last furlong. A win is a win, but he won by just a neck.

This Saturday, breaking from the far outside in a larger field than either of those two races, it's not at all certain that Arabian Knight can replicate that front-running performance. First, the Classic's field is bigger than that of either of Arabian Knight's two previous races, which means, first, that the tangle of traffic at the break will be greater. Second, we know that Arabian Knight is, or was, once disastrously tempted by early speed. Third, even if he is not drawn to waste energy, the core of the race up the backstretch and into the far turn will be highly tactical, and tactical speed, the ability to shift from low to high and back, when asked, is an ability that most often comes with time and experience.

Finally, in assessing Arabian Knight this week, it will be useful to remember that the Breeders' Cup Classic will be just the second race of his short life at a mile-and-a-quarter. We know from the Pacific Classic that he has the distance in him. But it remains an extraordinary fact that bears repeating in another way:

The Breeders' Cup Classic is a race that demands experience. The current favorite in the race — favored over a Belmont Stakes winner, no less — has only run this distance once before.