'You feel horseracing in the air' - Breeders' Cup supremo is raring to go

The Front Runner is Chris Cook's morning email exclusively for Members' Club Ultimate subscribers.

This week, Chris is at Keeneland in Kentucky for the Breeders' Cup and will be reporting from the track each day. His Breeders' Cup diary will be published online and in the newspaper each day and will still arrive in your inbox as usual at 7am.

Monday's email, in which Chris reflects on what makes Lexington 'the horse capital of the world' and looks ahead to a scintillating weekend, is available here as a free sample.

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If you think of the Breeders' Cup as a creature of Santa Anita and Churchill Downs, some recalibration may be needed as America's end-of-year jamboree takes over Keeneland for the third time in eight years. With its gentle slopes and trees showing every shade of red and gold, lovely little Keeneland looks like a child's drawing of rural autumn but perhaps it may not immediately strike you as the obvious place to stage an event billed as the world thoroughbred championships.

The attraction is its location, close to the heart of the US breeding industry, just outside the city of Lexington, Kentucky, which calls itself 'the horse capital of the world'. "Lexington is such a special place for us," says Drew Fleming, chief executive and president of the Breeders' Cup since 2019, speaking exclusively to the Front Runner in the build-up to this weekend's event.

"It's such an important breeding operation and from the moment you step off the plane, you feel horseracing in the air. You walk into restaurants or cafes or bars and people are talking racing."

Committing to Keeneland is no small decision for Fleming because of the investment needed to accommodate a Breeders' Cup-size crowd.

"Keeneland is a smaller venue, so we're investing just north of $10 million in temporary infrastructure to accommodate roughly 45,000 fans. We're adding approximately 175,000 square feet of additional temporary infrastructure to make sure that we have world-class facilities.

"Not only the two days of racing, but the whole week is a celebration of racing and the city of Lexington really gets behind that. We'll have a wonderful breakfast at Keeneland each morning, so that the owners can come and have drinks, maybe a glass of champagne, and watch their horses train. We'll have first-class entertainment every evening.

"For those that enter a race, they truly are our guest; it's complimentary tickets, complimentary hotels, a luxury vehicle service.

"For those owners that win, they've had a great day at the races, their horse has won some money, they get a trophy. But it's also a goal of the company for the horses that didn't run as well, for those owners to walk away and say, I had a wonderful weekend in racing, I want to stay involved in this business and I want to come back."

Flightline: 'has been a really special horse for American racing'Credit: Benoit Photo

Fleming is proud of the progress his event has made since 1984, from seven races and $10m distributed to 14 races and $31m this year. Attracting talent from overseas remains a major point of emphasis and led to the creation of the Breeders' Cup Challenge Series, which now includes 82 races in 12 countries.

His company pays $40,000 towards the travel fees of each international raider and he is pleased once more by the strength of the challenge from Europe.

The Japanese challenge, however, is limited to Chain Of Love in the Qatar Racing Sprint, surprising in view of the seven runners and two winners from Japan at Del Mar last year. Fleming points to the recent weakness of the yen as a contributing factor. He will attend the Japan Cup, giving up his turkey to fly out on Thanksgiving Day, in the hope of building relationships that will lead to more runners in future.

These are progressive times in the regulation of US racing. Gone are the days of discussing who will or will not use Lasix, as the Breeders' Cup will be free of raceday medication for the second time. Fleming reports no complaints from horsemen after that change was made last year.

Whip rules across the country were standardised this summer by the new Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority (HISA), with punishments for jockeys who use the stick more than six times and prize-money forfeited for ten uses. The US's drug-testing regime will also be tightened up under HISA from January.

Bob Baffert is expected to have runners, having served a 90-day suspension this spring in relation to his Medina Spirit testing positive for an anti-inflammatory after winning last year's Kentucky Derby. Baffert remains in dispute with Churchill Downs, 70 miles away, but there is nothing to prevent him having runners at Keeneland and Fleming says the Breeders' Cup must follow local regulators in such matters.

"The Breeders' Cup is supportive of HISA," he adds, "because of the anti-doping programme that will shortly come into effect and the benefits it will have to make sure we have a sport rich in integrity." More dope testing and more intelligence-led testing are expected.

Fleming hopes the headlines flowing from this Breeders' Cup will concern themselves with cheerier subjects, like: how good is Flightline? The highest-rated horse in the world faces big-name rivals in the Classic but only one result is expected.

"He has been a really special horse for American racing," Fleming says. And British viewers won't have to stay up past midnight to see him, as the time difference is down to just four hours this year. Flightline's race, the climax of the two days' action, is due off at 9.40pm on Saturday.

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The Front Runner is our latest email newsletter available exclusively to Members' Club Ultimate subscribers. Chris Cook, a four-time Racing Reporter of the Year award winner, provides his take on the day's biggest stories and tips for the upcoming racing every morning from Monday to Friday