He primary aim of Breeders’ Cup Limited would be to build positive public awareness of Thoroughbred racing and to expand opportunities for improvement of the Thoroughbred business. These goals are first accomplished through the Breeders’ Cup Championship, a year-end global showcase of the game’s greatest stars.
Additionally, the Breeders’ Cup supports those goals through the funds of a year-round collection of stakes races, customer marketing programs and nationally televised races.
It is the All Star Game of Thoroughbred racing – only better. Eight times greater. It’s the Breeders’ Cup Championship, a multi-million dollar extravaganza that brings together the world’s best horses to compete in eight sensational races.The Breeders’ Cup Championship culminates the racing season and crowns the fleetest sprinters, the most promising two-year-olds, the best turf horses. The right to be known as the best of the best belongs, many would argue, to the winner of this day’s final and richest race: the $4 million Breeders’ Cup Classic.
The Breeders’ Cup Championship is nonstop action from the moment the horses step onto the track for the first race, the Distaff, until the garland is draped across the shoulders of the Classic winner at dusk. Heart-stopping finishes, stunning upsets, international glamour, old-fashioned fun – Breeders’ Cup Championship has it all.
Racing’s richest event is really a movable feast. Each fall, a distinct North American track plays host to the Breeders’ Cup Championship at a unique and distinctive way. One year finds it at Churchill Downs with its rich trove of background, yet another in Orientation Belmont Park, the next at scenic Santa Anita at the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. Major paths compete aggressively for the right to stage the tournament program and each year’s selection is eagerly anticipated. At precisely the exact same time, the revolving nature of the Breeders’ Cup Championship ensures it goes back to all of racing.
That is what its founders envisioned while the notion of the Breeders’ Cup took origin in 1982. Racing’s leaders wanted a car to promote the game, a showcase for its finest components, along with a grand finale to the racing season. The Championship races became the cornerstone of a yearlong program which has allocated over $380 million to owners and breeders since the inaugural 1984 event. The first Breeders’ Cup Championship, in glitzy Hollywood Park, was an instantaneous hit.
Since then, the Breeders’ Cup Championship has redefined the racing calendar – getting the season-ending target for the horses – and – given the sport a championship event similar to the World Series or the Super Bowl. Most divisional champions crowned since 1984 have participated in a Breeders’ Cup race. In addition to the Classic, the other races are the Juvenile and the Juvenile Fillies, the Distaff and the Filly & Mare Turf for females ages three and up; the Sprint, the Mile, and the Turf. The latter three are open to horses of both sexes, as is the Classic.
The Breeders’ Cup Championship has provided racing with a number of its best moments. Pictures like these are indelibly etched in its rich chronicles: the great Cigar ending his perfect 1995 season with a thrilling victory in the Breeders’ Cup Classic; Personal Ensign courageously inching past Kentucky Derby winner Winning Colors to retire undefeated in 1988; Arazi swooping in from France and stunning those who saw him at the 1991 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile.
“Championship day is definitely racing’s finest hour,” says John R. Gaines, founding father of the Breeders’ Cup and former owner of Gainesway Farm near Lexington, Kentucky. “It defines our reason for being and elevates the spirit of an whole business.
“Each season is unique. Every year is much better. Among the event’s most exciting elements is that the intense competition between North American and European contenders. In virtually every race, national pride is online. Owners and trainers from England, Ireland, France, Japan, and Germany now circle the Breeders’ Cup Championship on their calendars and plan their own horses’ schedules accordingly.
Dozens of European horses plank freight planes each autumn and cross the Atlantic in search of the Breeders’ Cup’s rich spoils. Their success in many of these races has assured that horses keep coming back. Who can forget the gallant French filly Miesque winning back-to-back editions of the Breeders’ Cup Mile? Or a obscure French-based runner called Arcangues pulling the biggest upset in Breeders’ Cup history, winning the 1993 Classic and paying $269.20 to win?
Horses have journeyed from as far away as Japan to compete in the Breeders’ Cup Championship. It has been the foremost international racing event. “The program has been considered as a radical step when it started, but now it is considered part of the fabric of American racing,” states Breeders’ Cup president D. G. Van Clief, Jr..
The Breeders’ Cup Championship continues to increase in popularity because of its stature and eager level of competition. Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky, holds the records for both attendance and total wagering. The renowned racecourse brought 80,452 audiences in 1998 and if Breeders’ Cup came back to Louisville in 2000, over $108 million has been wagered.
But the Breeders’ Cup Championship is known beyond the borders of the specific host track. NBC has televised the event since its inception, giving a degree of air time unprecedented in Thoroughbred racing. The network’s policy has won Eclipse Awards for National Television Achievement and the Outstanding Live Sports Special of 1992 in the 14th Emmy Awards for Sports annual service.
The buildup to the Breeders’ Cup starts well beforehand of the Championship day. NTRA’s”Racing to the Breeders’ Cup” on ESPN understands the momentum began in early summer and continues through mid-October. The nationally televised series is made up of dozens of stakes races at major tracks throughout the country and functions as racing’s version of the playoffs.
Along with television, simulcasting – the transmission by satellite of real races – has helped further the recognition of the Breeders’ Cup. At the exact same time, the caliber of the races on Championship day has made simulcast outlets keen to take the program. The amount of sockets demonstrating the telecast is growing by leaps and bounds. In 1984, the seven races have been beamed to 19 North American sockets, in which patrons wagered $8 million. Today, over 1000 outlets handle excess of $108 million. Expanding its own recognition, the actual race sign is sent by satellite to simulcast outlets in over 25 nations, throughout the Western Hemisphere, Europe and Australia. The continued expansion of the Breeders’ Cup simulcast across the world is a main goal of the Breeders’ Cup.
Major corporate sponsors have also helped boost recognition of the Breeders’ Cup Championship. Sponsors have included Buick, Alberto-Culver, Budweiser, Delta Air Lines, Emirates Airline, Mobil, National Car Rental, Visa and Sears.
While sponsors have attracted added name recognition into the Breeders’ Cup, Thoroughbred breeders and owners have been its backbone since the start. They don’t just provide the horses which compete in Breeders’ Cup events, they pay the nominations from which the company derives its major source of funding.
Stallion owners annually pay a nomination fee that is the equivalent of a stallion’s advertised stud fee, or a minimum of 1,000. Breeders pay a nomination fee of $500 for every foal. Nominated horses are eligible to compete for millions in both the National Stakes program and the Breeders’ Cup Championship occasions.
As an global application, the Breeders’ Cup has instituted a nomination process to breeders around the globe. Annual nominations from all over the world have made the Breeders’ Cup a worldwide institution.
In a limited while, the Breeders’ Cup has been firmly established as Thoroughbred racing’s most prestigious event. Nothing could equal its millions in prize money or its international cast of talent. No additional day of racing could match the Breeders’ Cup Championship for non-stop excitement.
The Breeders’ Cup has accomplished what its founders set out to do – and more. It remains the definitive evaluation of champions and has been racing’s most recognizable and successful showpiece. It only guarantees to improve in the years to come.
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