Best Pal Supplemented to Breeders’ Cup Classic

“Maybe I’m naive, or even half-stupid,” owner John Mabee said Monday after paying $120,000 of the $360,000 that is needed to make his 6-year-old gelding, Best Pal, eligible for the $3-million Breeders’ Cup Classic at Churchill Downs on Nov. 5.

For the third time, Mabee is paying a supplementary fee to get Best Pal into a Breeders’ Cup race. He put up $120,000 in 1990, when Best Pal ran sixth in the Juvenile and earned $10,000. Last year, after a $360,000 payment was made, Best Pal earned nothing for his 10th-place finish in the Classic.

The $240,000 balance on this year’s payment is due Nov. 2, when entries will be drawn for the seven Breeders’ Cup races. Breeders’ Cup supplementary fees are 12% of a race’s purse and are required of horses that weren’t nominated for $500 during the year in which they were foaled.

First place in the Classic is worth $1.56 million. Best Pal, who has earned slightly more than $5 million, could move closer to the first two horses on the money list by winning. Alysheba, who won the Classic at Churchill Downs in 1988, is No. 1 with $6.6 million and John Henry is next at $6.5 million.

“Giving the horse a shot (at the record) has always been a factor,” Mabee said. “He’s training well and deserves a chance. Last year, he didn’t come up to the Classic just right, and there was a lot of thought about scratching him a couple of days before the race.”

Best Pal has won one of five starts this year, and finished third in his last race, the Kentucky Cup Classic at Turfway Park on Sept. 24. Best Pal will be making his first start at Churchill Downs since his second-place finish behind Strike The Gold in the 1991 Kentucky Derby.

It was Mabee’s understanding Chris McCarron would accept the assignment in the Breeders’ Cup.