Adam Mills spent the week after the Breeders’ Cup going through Keeneland one race at a time. On the latest Players’ Podcast, the Total Performance Data analyst joined PTF to look at four of the turf races through the tracking numbers: top speed, stride length, stride frequency and sectional times.
His big-picture verdict, given on the show on Nov. 5: “The best horse in 99% of those races got to win the race,” and “this is one of the strongest Breeders’ Cups we’ve seen for a while.”
Breeders’ Cup Turf: Benvenuto Cellini had more speed than we thought
Benvenuto Cellini won the Turf as the 3-1 favorite for Aidan O’Brien and Ryan Moore, with 40-1 Map of Stars second for Francis Graffard and Diamond Necklace third.
Mills started with a confession. He had pigeonholed the Irish Derby winner as a long-striding horse who needed a mile and a half, a galloping track and a strong pace. “I see a mistake that I made,” he said. Keeneland showed “he has far more speed than he’s previously been given credit for.”
The numbers Mills gave:
- A top speed of 41.1 mph, the fastest of anyone in the final furlong and the fastest split of the race.
- An average stride length of over eight meters at the close. No other horse was within half a meter. “Every stride he takes, he’s taking half a meter out of the field,” Mills said.
- Even in his loss in the Arc at Longchamp, where he missed the break, his closing splits got down to 10.99 seconds.
Mills said the colt is staying in training at four, with Hong Kong possibly on the agenda. “He now sets the standard that everything else has to aim at” for next year’s Turf at Belmont, he said.
PTF admitted Benvenuto Cellini was “a little skinny for me in the betting going in, but he didn’t make that price look too bad at all.”
Turf Sprint: Bacio is the fastest horse TPD timed this year
Bacio won the Turf Sprint at 2-1 for Wesley Ward, with Cy Fair second. Mills wrote a blog piece asking whether Bacio should be considered one of the best sprinters in the world, and the Hong Kong fans let him have it. “The inbox was pinging left, right and center with all these spreadsheets of why I was wrong,” he said.
What he would stand behind: “Bacio is the fastest horse that we have timed this year.”
- A top speed of 44.8 mph and early speed of 3.8 seconds.
- The third race in a row in which he reached 30 mph in four seconds or less.
- Stride frequency averaging 2.56 per second over the race and peaking around 2.7 early. Mills put the race average at about 2.45.
The horses who tried to go with him paid for it. Joe Shiesty finished ninth, Miss Yechance tenth and Shisospicy last of 14. Mills thinks five and a half furlongs is Bacio’s limit and that he’s better at five, and he isn’t sure Bacio can last six, where many of the world’s best sprints are run. He mentioned Australia as a possible plan.
PTF tied it to old-school chart reading: “When the leader hangs on and the other two who were pressing end up out the back, that tells you it is an upgradeable performance more often than not.” He doubted Bacio going in because he hadn’t yet run around a turn the way he had on a straight in Europe. “Apparently he was just getting warmed up.”
Juvenile Turf Sprint: Libertango is better than her billing
Libertango got the Breeders’ Cup races on Future Stars Friday started with a win as the 9-5 favorite for George Boughey and Billy Loughnane. Mills said she’d be the champion two-year-old filly in a normal year. She’d won the Albany and the Lowther, and the only two horses to beat her this year have both won Group 1s.
She recovered from trouble on the turn, then hit 38.9 mph in the stretch with a stride frequency over two and a half per second. Mills expects her to stay at six furlongs next year, with races like the Commonwealth Cup at Royal Ascot on the agenda. “I think Libertango is being slightly underplayed because of the horse we’re going to discuss in a moment,” he said.
Juvenile Fillies Turf: Sun Goddess was still lengthening
That horse was Sun Goddess, the 4-5 favorite who won the Juvenile Fillies Turf for Aidan O’Brien and Ryan Moore. Green Empress ran second at 12-1. Mills noted that Green Empress has finished second four times, each time to Sun Goddess, and won the Marcel Boussac. Amusingly, the Lagardère winner, was fourth for Francis Graffard. Mills thought she didn’t get the best ride from Colin Keane and was too far back, but said it wouldn’t have mattered.
Mills called it “probably the best performance of her career,” on her ninth start. The key was the final furlong:
- Her stride lengthened to 7.93 meters, close to her peak, and her longest strides of the race came in the final furlong.
- Her runout speed of 37.6 mph was faster than her average for the whole race.
“She’s going faster after the race is over than she was as an average across the whole race,” Mills said. “That would suggest that potentially there’s more improvement to come.”
He expects the English and Irish Guineas first, then the Coronation Stakes, with a possible try at 10 furlongs later. His one caveat: some O’Brien fillies have disappointed in the spring, including Precise in this year’s 1,000 Guineas. But “this is probably Aidan’s best two-year-old in a generation,” he said, and “she has the potential to be the best filly he’s ever trained.”
A punter-friendly Breeders’ Cup
Mills pointed out that 5-1 Kathynmarissa in the Filly & Mare Turf was the longest-priced winner of the weekend’s 14 Breeders’ Cup races. He thinks that’s a reason to trust the form, not doubt it: “When you get results like that, I think you can really trust the form book.”
The one exception he wouldn’t discuss was Notable Speech, beaten as the even-money favorite by Deterministic in the Mile. “We’ll get all the YouTube comments,” he said.
Takeaways for next year
- Benvenuto Cellini isn’t just a mile-and-a-half grinder. He has a turn of foot, and he stays in training.
- Bacio is a five-furlong monster. Be skeptical at six.
- Libertango may be underrated because she shares a crop with Sun Goddess.
- Sun Goddess was still lengthening after the wire. If she trains on, she sets the standard at three.
- Upgrade leaders who hold on when the horses pressing them collapse.
Watch the full conversation above. More Breeders’ Cup reviews: PTF and JK’s full Breeders’ Cup recap, Was there a draw bias at the Breeders’ Cup? and O’Brien passes Baffert for Breeders’ Cup wins. Everything else is on the ITM Breeders’ Cup hub.
