2020 Breeders’ Cup Classic Preview: Global Campaign
In the days leading up to the 37th Breeders’ Cup at Keeneland Race Course in Lexington, Kentucky, usracing.com will profile the horses in the $6 million Breeders’ Cup Classic (Saturday, Nov. 7).
November 2, 2019: Vino Rosso, ridden by Irad Ortiz, Jr., wins the Longines Breeders’ Cup Classic on Breeders’ Cup World Championship Saturday at Santa Anita Park on November 2, 2019: in Arcadia, California. Kaz Ishida/Eclipse Sportswire/CSM
This son of Curlin and grandson of A.P. Indy, both Classic winners, has the best distance DNA in the field, and he comes in off a career Beyer top. So why will he be double-digit odds? (He’s 20-1 on the morning-line.) Because Global Campaign never has faced a field this good, and his three best races came on or near the pace.
That’s how he won last time in the 1 1/4-mile Woodward, in which he led throughout in soft fractions against underachiever Tacitus and three second-raters. No way he’ll be able to do that against Bob Baffert’s speedy pair of Authentic and Maximum Security.
“I think he’s a very talented horse,” trainer Stanley Hough said. “I think he’s coming to where he could really show it. I think he belongs in a race like this. He’s got the pedigree to do it.”
His best-case scenario would be to repeat his tactics in last year’s 1 1/8-mile Peter Pan, in which he sat second and beat subsequent Belmont Stakes hero Sir Winston. If he can’t, he’ll be in trouble, because even if somehow Global Campaign wins a pace duel, he’ll have to hold off the late kicks of Tiz the Law and Improbable. That’s hard to imagine.
“I think he’s got a pretty good pace to him, and it helps for him to go this far,” Hough said. “I think his best race is 1 1/4 and getting a good position. Now he’s just got to outrun these others.”
Not impossible, but an awful lot to ask. Stranger things have happened in the Classic, but I think Global Campaign would’ve fit much better in the Dirt Mile.
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Odds: 20-1
Post position: 7
Jockey: Javier Castellano
Trainer: Stanley Hough
Owner: Sagamore Farm, WinStar Farm
Career record: 9-6-0-1
Career earnings: $781,080
Top Equibase speed figure: 109
Pedigree: Curlin-Globe Trot, by A.P. Indy
Color: Bay
Running style: Tactical speed
Notes: Chronic foot problems disrupted Global Campaign’s 3-year-old season, in which he was 3-for-4 before being laid off in August following a third-place finish in the Jim Dandy. “No hoof, no horse,” said Hough, who didn’t run him again until April 25 at Gulfstream … Global Campaign’s name is a play off his mother’s (Globe Trot) … The likeable, articulate Hough, 72, retired in 2012 and took six years off before returning to train for Maryland-based Sagamore Farm. The Woodward was his first Grade 1 victory since 2004. He has 2,212 wins in a career that began at age 21 in 1969.
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