ARCADIA, Calif. — Bring her on!
With the whole turf world focused today on Zenyatta’s dramatic showdown against male horses in the $5 million Breeders’ Cup Classic at Santa Anita, a rival trainer took one look at her amazing record and announced, “We’re ready for her. She’s about to have the toughest race of her life.”
The trainer, Tim Ice, will saddle Summer Bird, the likely third favorite in the race, but if anyone expects him to take a step back from the Zenyatta challenge, they don’t know Tim.
“Everyone thinks Zenyatta is a cinch because she has never been beaten,” he said. “Well, my horse has just as much a shot as she does. She has to run a mile and a quarter for the first time and she has to run against the boys.
“She’s beatable. Every horse is beatable. If you’re scared in this business, don’t run.”
Zenyatta is queen of the racing realm. At 5 years of age, she has never lost a race, winning all 13. Today’s Classic will be her last before going to the breeding shed, but it is a monumental challenge because her connections have studiously kept her racing against her own gender all through her career, resisting all pressures to take the leap into the unknown and sending her against male horses.
Today, everything changes. The giant mare takes on not only the best in America but also two brilliant horses from Europe in a bid to set an American turf record of becoming the first female horse to win 14 straight races and retire undefeated.
What makes Ice’s confidence so surprising is that Summer Bird will be running over Santa Anita’s controversial synthetic track for the first time, an experience that has scuttled some of the best of the breed in the last few years.
Summer Bird is by far the best 3-year-old colt in the country — after winning the Belmont Stakes, the Travers and the Jockey Club Gold Cup, all on traditional dirt tracks. Many of us would walk over broken glass to bet him in the Classic if it were on dirt. But nobody can be sure how he will run on the synthetic strip.
Except, apparently, his trainer.
“The track is not an issue,” Ice said emphatically at the barn yesterday. “He has worked over this track three times and he has had no problems with it. He’s thriving. He’s not a tired horse, his coat is glowing, he has put on weight.
“He is at his absolute peak. I think he’s coming up to the Classic better than the Travers or the Gold Cup. He galloped a mile and a half over it this morning and he came back bouncing and playing. I cannot see any difference in how he has trained on the Pro-Ride track and dirt. He’s ready.”
If that’s not enough, consider this: Ice detests synthetic racing surfaces.
“Just because Summer Bird likes it and can handle it, doesn’t mean I’d move my stable out here,” he said. “They jumped to conclusions too quickly when they mandated that all the tracks in California should be synthetics. It has caused more problems than dirt. There are a lot of questions to be answered about synthetic tracks.”
Ice might be the only Eastern-based trainer here for the Cup with no nightmares on how their horses will perform on the synthetics. It has also become a bettor’s nightmare. They cannot be sure how many good horses — like Summer Bird, Quality Road, Pyro, etc. — will perform on a surface thought to have a strong grass-like bias to its character.
But Ice is not the only one in the stable who thinks Summer Bird will take it in stride. He brought his jockey, Kent Desormeaux, out to Santa Anita to work him in the morning.
“Kent loved how he moved over the track,” the trainer said. “Kent said he took to it like duck to water. That has given us a lot of confidence.”
If that holds true this afternoon, Summer Bird is going to run a mighty race in the Classic. He has moved forward all through the summer, getting better and stronger by the week, according to Ice.
“I have great respect for Zenyatta,” he said. “She has run every time they’ve taken her out.
“But the Classic is going to be her toughest race by far and we have just as much of a shot at winning as her.”
By nightfall, all the questions will be answered on Zenyatta. She will either be hailed a unique figure in the annals of American racing or a great mare who, somehow, blotted the record in her last and toughest assignment.