ARCADIA, Calif. – Early one summer morning on the backstretch at Saratoga, New York Hall of Fame trainer Phil Johnson waved a sheet of paper at me and asked, “What’s going on with the Breeders’ Cup?”
He was not pleased. He said, “Did you know they are hiking the entry fees in the Classic to fund purse increases in the Juvenile and the Mile?”
It was news to me, but it didn’t take long to find out what was going on. The Breeders’ Cup this year is socking owners for tens of thousands of dollars extra to run their horses here at Santa Anita to fatten the purses of the Juvenile and Mile.
That means Johnson, who was saddling Volponi in the Classic, would have to dig deep to get his horse to the gate so some other lucky owner in the Juvenile or Mile could score a nice payday.
Some of the entry fees have really ballooned. Until now, an owner entering a horse in one of the $1 million Cup events would fork over $20,000. This year, it cost $30,000 for the privilege.
For the $2 million events, the Distaff and the BC Turf, the entry fee zoomed from $40,000 to $60,000. But for the $4 million Classic – Johnson’s concern – the entry fees rocketed from $80,000 to $120,000.
Where is all the extra money going? To raise the purses of the Juvenile and Mile from $1 million to $1.5 million.
The legitimate question Johnson posed was: Should the owners of the Classic field cough up a huge entry fee to boost the purses of races in which they are not competing?
Even more to the point: In a racing extravaganza built on breeder contributions, why are owners now being forced to subsidize other owners?
This shift in funding prompted a trade magazine, the Thoroughbred Times, to editorialize, “The way things are going, pretty soon, the Breeders’ Cup will have to be renamed the Owners’ and Breeders’ Cup. Such is the financial burden that owners of starters in the World Thoroughbred Championship are being asked to shoulder.”
Breeders’ Cup officials offered an explanation: “The purses were increased in the Juvenile and Mile to maintain the dominant position of the event and maintain that dominance in relation to other sporting events around the world.”
That position is understandable. When the Breeders’ Cup first broke over the world in 1984, with its seven races offering $1 million and more, there were only two other races in the universe that offered a million-dollar purse. They were the Arlington Million and the Hollywood Futurity.
Today, the million-dollar purse is, well, almost mundane. All over the globe, nations are running off million-dollar events every month. In fact, when the Times tallied it up, it found 60 races abroad with purses of $1 million or more, headed by the Dubai World Cup at $6 million.
The Japan Cup goes for $3.8 million, the Hong Kong Cup for $2.3 million, and Australia’s Doncaster Handicap for $2.4 million. All told, Australia, a thinly populated racing nation, has seven races annually above $1 million, including the Golden Slipper, the richest race for 2-year-olds in the world, for $1.8 million.
So Sydney’s Golden Slipper still carries more prize money than either of the Breeders’ Cup races for 2-year-old colts and 2-year-old fillies.
With that kind of foreign pressure, the Breeders’ Cup was in danger of losing its pre-eminence. It had to review its purse structure to keep its fiscal and aesthetic appeal current.
The debate is whether owners should pay the freight. It’s a very stiff ticket to have to pay $120,000 just to get your horse in the starting gate for the Classic. So stiff that Johnson, who won the Classic last year with Volponi, and Murray Johnson, who trains Perfect Drift, wondered whether it was worth paying that money to run.
Only when the Classic lost three of its potential superstars – Candy Ride, Mineshaft and Empire Maker – did Murray Johnson switch signals and decide to go in the Classic.
The Thoroughbred Times is worried: “At some point, the substantially higher entry fees will hurt both the size of the fields and their quality. This effect would run counter to the purpose of the Breeders’ Cup, which is to conduct the best races in the world with the best horses in the world.”
As a result, owners, instead of breeders, are being “taxed” to keep the Cup races competitive with foreign races. That, somehow, was not the original intent of the cup named for breeders.