In richest horse race in nation, New Orleans Saints owner hoping not to be left fuming
Many of the best horses, jockeys and trainers in racing will square off Saturday at Gulfstream Park in a pair of high-dollar events, the $9 million Pegasus World Cup Invitational and $7 million Pegasus World Cup Turf Invitational.
Here are five storylines to watch:
▪ 1. It’s all about the money. Big money.
With a purse of $9 million, the Pegasus World Cup Invitational is the richest race in the nation.
And that’s after track officials slashed $7 million off last years grandiose figure and used it to create a new race for grass specialists, the Pegasus World Cup Turf Invitational on the same program.
How valuable is the Pegasus?
It’s three times richer than the Kentucky Derby, which carries a purse of $3 million.
It’s nine times richer than the Florida Derby, Gulfstream’s annual event for Triple Crown hopefuls.
It’s worth $3 million more than the Breeders’ Cup Classic, horse racing’s year-end championship event, which had owned the honor as nation’s richest race until the Pegasus knocked it down a peg.
Someone with a fast horse just can’t show up, though, and make a run for the $4 million winner’s share. Entry into the Pegasus isn’t cheap. You have to pony up $500,000 just to take part.
But, figuring on a final running time of about 108 seconds, the payoff to the winner comes out to about $37,000 per second, enough to keep a horse knee deep in carrots for the rests of its life.
▪ 2. Accelerate is the horse to beat.
Though likely unfamiliar to casual fans outside of racing, Accelerate is the current kingpin in the Sport of Kings.
The 6-year-old won six of his seven races last year, including the Breeders’ Cup Classic, while amassing more than $5 million in earnings.
The Pegasus is to be his final race. Afterward, he’ll be sent home to Kentucky to begin a new career as a breeding stallion.
If recent history holds, his 11 challengers will have their work cut out in what marks the third running of the Pegasus.
Each of the previous two winners — Arrogate and Gun Runner — notched victories in the Breeders’ Cup Classic before closing out their racing careers with wins in the Pegasus.
Accelerate will be trying to do the same.
▪ 3. Winning a $9 million horse race will likely do little in removing the bitter sting left by the New Orleans Saints’ controversial overtime loss to the Rams in the AFC Championship game on Sunday.
But it certainly won’t hurt Saints owner Gayle Benson.
Benson owns Tom’s d’Etat, a horse named for her late husband (and the Saints’ previous owner), and one of 12 horses scheduled to line up Saturday in the Pegasus.
Tom’s d’Etat will be 20-1 on the program.
▪ 4. The distance from start to finish of the $7 million Pegasus World Cup Turf Invitation is 1 3/16 miles, the same distance as the Preakness Stakes, middle leg of the Triple Crown.
It is, relative to most North American horse races, long.
But it is a short distance to traverse for Aerolithe, given how far the gray mare has journeyed just to take get to South Florida.
Aerolithe, you see, has raced exclusively in Japan.
To get from there to here, she flew for 21 hours and 25 minutes to get from Tokyo to her final destination, with stops along the way in Seoul, South Korea, and Anchorage, Alaska.
The undefeated Mexican champion Kukulkan, who is running in the $9 million Pegasus World Cup, has done a fair amount of traveling himself recently. After traveling to South Florida to win the Caribbean Classic at Gulfstream back in December, he returned to Mexico.
Now he’s back, putting his perfect 14 for 14 record on the line.
▪ 5. Horses come and go, sometimes as a national audience is just getting to know them. Justify, this year’s Triple Crown winner, is a prime example. He raced but six times and was retired after making history in the Belmont.
Trainers and jockeys, on the other hand, are the constants. And one such trainer, in particular, D. Wayne Lukas, has a horse going in in the Pegasus. Lukas, now 83, will be sending out Bravazo, who finished second by 1/2-length to Justify in last year’s Preakness.
Lukas has been around the sport so long that three of the other trainers with horses in the Pegasus — Todd Pletcher (Audible), Dallas Stewart (Seeking the Soul), and Kiaran McLaughlin (True Timbers) — were once his assistants.
“Wayne has been a great mentor to all of us and a coach,” McLaughlin said.
Said Lukas: “It’s one thing to train a nice horse or have two or three champions. But any time you have an influence on a person’s life and you make a difference in what they do… and have the success these guys are having, there’s no finer thing than that.”
Time of race
Post time for the first race on Gulfstream’s 12-race program is 11:30 a.m.
The Pegasus is scheduled for 5:36 p.m. and will be televised on NBC, with coverage starting at 4:30 p.m.
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