Friday’s Breeders’ Cup Race Selections

By Ron Correll
Senior columnist
Tracksideview —-

The Breeders’ Cup is calling Nov. 1 Future Stars Friday because the five premiere races deal with juveniles and when you are handicapping juveniles, anything can happen. So, I will try to assist with which horses have the best chance of winning one of these key races at Santa Anita Park in Southern California.

We’ll start with the Juvenile Turf Sprint, which is Race 5 on your program and has a post time of 1:12 Pacific time (that would be 4:12 Eastern and 3:12 Central time).

Juvenile Turf Sprint – Trainer Wesley Ward could claim the trifecta since he has three runners and Ward has a reputation of producing fast 2-year-olds. Ward trains Four Wheel Drive, post 9 (odds 3-1); Kimari, post 7 (7-2); and Cambria, post 12 (12-1). Trainer Simon Crisford sends over A’Ali, post 10, (6-1) from Europe. I’m going to break up the Ward tri and put A’Ali in third.
Picks: 9-7-10-12

Juvenile Turf – Race 6 – post time 1:52 Pacific – I’ll put the Aidan O’Brien runner, Arizona, post 12 (5-2) on top, followed by Decoded Invader, post 4 (4-1), Structor, post 2 (5-1) and Peace Achieved, post 3 (10-1).
Picks: 12-4-2-3

Juvenile Fillies – Race 7 – post time 2:32 Pacific – I think this one is a tossup between Donna Veloce, post 1 (3-1) and Bast, post 6 (7-2). I don’t know if the one-hole will hurt the Simon Callaghan trained Donna Veloce or not. She freaked in her only other start and went straight to the lead and won by more than nine lengths. Bast, trained by Bob Baffert, is just as good, but it doesn’t look like she needs the lead and may stalk. The other two in here are Wicked Whisper, post 7 (7-2) and British Idiom, post 4 (7-2).
Picks: 1-6-7-4

Juvenile Fillies Turf – Race 8 – post time 3:12 Pacific – This race looks wide open. There are five fillies that have a chance in my opinion: Albigna, post 9 (9-2); Daahyeh, post 5 (5-1); Sweet Melania, post 12 (5-1); Selflessly, post 13 (8-1); and Crystalle, post 7 (8-1). Crystalle will be flying late and she has only missed once in three starts with that running style.
Picks: 9-5-7-13-12

Juvenile – Pace 9 – post time 4:03 Pacific – This race centers on two colts: Eight Rings, post 6 (2-1) and Dennis’ Moment, post 1 (8-5). I was going to use Maxfield but he was scratched so I’ll use Wrecking Crew, post 2 (20-1) to fill the trifecta
Picks: 6-1-2