Horse Handicapping

Past Breeders Cup Winners

It's not exactly like 14 fit and ready equine athletes on Crystal Meth set to throw down, but those comparisons can be made to the blur known as the BC Sprint. If you want to talk about margin of error, it doesn't exist in this race. A horse can't get steadied, stopped or even hesitate or the payday dream will be over, just like it was last year for Taste of Paradise, who was troubled and arguably best.

Only five favorites have won in the history of the event and of those five, really only one was prohibitive. You can go wire-to-wire, like eight winners have, but the place to be is in a pressing situation slightly outside of horses and out of trouble.

Foreign-based runners have not had success in this race except for the 1991 highest-priced winner Sheikh Albadou, and the biggest winning margin of four lengths was recorded by filly Very Subtle. If you are betting, get set to bite the fingernails as seven winning margins were either a neck, a nose or a head.

The fans were on the money in 2000 when Kona Gold not only won as chalk, but also ran the fastest six furlongs in 1:07.77.

In the Sprints at Churchill, only Reraise was able to take them all the way on the lead. The other winners had to close an average of three and a half lengths to greet the cameraman. Two Churchill Sprint winners made their final prep at Belmont, one each came in from Santa Anita and Turfway, and the other was ferried in from France.

Once again, you can make a score in this race if the Superfecta is the vehicle. Last year, the third, fifth and fourth choices in the race ran one/two/three, and the super came back over $35,000.