Cat Thief Steals Breeders’ Cup Kitty

Cat Thief must have been one of those horses that James Bond, Behrens’ trainer, had been saying didn’t belong in the $4-million Breeders’ Cup Classic.

Even Wayne Lukas, Cat Thief’s trainer, would have been hard-pressed to disagree. Cat Thief won the Swaps Stakes at Hollywood Park in July, but there were seven losing efforts before that this year, and three since then. In Cat Thief’s last big race, the Travers at Saratoga in August, he beat only one horse and finished 12 1/4 lengths behind the winner.

But this is the Classic, a race that has been visited by goofiness a few times over in its 16 years. Wild Again won the first one, at 31-1, and a French horse with a bad back, Arcangues, got home at 133-1 six years ago.

Saturday was another of those Classic days that have knocked logic into the next block. The survivors of the 1999 racing wars are not a particularly robust lot, and Cat Thief underscored that before 45,124 at Gulfstream Park, stealing off with a 1 1/4-length win while Behrens, the 2-1 favorite, struggled to run seventh and several other purportedly better horses finished up the track.

The eight-race, $13-million day in purses was advertised as a bonanza for trainer Bob Baffert; Lukas, whom Baffert has supplanted as the country’s premier trainer, was supposed to settle for leftovers. Instead, Baffert came up empty with eight horses in six races, three of them favorites, and Lukas added to his record Breeders’ Cup haul with wins No. 14 and 15. Before the victory by Cat Thief, who paid $41.20, Lukas won the Juvenile Fillies with Cash Run, who paid $67 after beating Baffert’s previously unbeaten filly, Chilukki, by 1 1/4 lengths.

“Bob’s had a wonderful year,” Lukas said, “but I can’t judge how he feels. All I know is that this is the most fun I’ve ever had.”

Behrens could have wrapped up horse-of-the-year honors, but now the national title is a Rubik’s Cube. Voters may go back to another Lukas 3-year-old, Charismatic, who won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness before suffering a career-ending injury in the Belmont; or Victory Gallop, who was the best older horse before he went to the sidelines after beating Behrens in the Whitney Handicap at Saratoga. Saeed bin Suroor, the trainer of Daylami, even threw the name of his horse into the mix after a convincing 2 1/2-length win in the $2-million Turf, but this was his only appearance in North America this year.

Lukas, who trains Cat Thief for his owner-breeder, William T. Young, and trained Charismatic for Bob and Beverly Lewis, is enough of a politician to avoid stepping into this debate. “It’s not my decision,” he said. “You guys have got your work cut out for you.”

The estimated 250 voters come from three groups--the turf writers, the Daily Racing Form and the track racing secretaries.

Lukas said that he and Young vacillated about whether Cat Thief should even run in the Classic.

“We agonized,” Lukas said. “The fact that Pat Day was available to ride him was a big part of the equation.”

With a record 11 Breeders’ Cup wins, Day has won the Classic four times, including the first, with Wild Again in 1984, and last year with Awesome Again. His other Classic win, in 1990, came with Unbridled, who won both the Derby and the richest Breeders’ Cup race that year. Sunday Silence also did a Derby-Classic double, in 1989, but on Saturday Lukas became the first trainer to win both races in the same year with different horses. Earlier this year, Lukas, on the ballot for the first time, was voted into the Racing Hall of Fame.

Young, 82, who races in the name of Overbrook Farm, his layout in Lexington, Ky., had won two Breeders’ Cup races before, but never a Classic. He’s been in the business for 20 years and Lukas, who won the Derby for him with Grindstone in 1996, is the only trainer he’s ever had.

“Everybody said we’ve run this horse too much this year,” Young said. “Everybody said that he couldn’t win at a mile and a quarter. But I know one thing, boys, and that’s if you don’t run ‘em, you can’t win ‘em.”

This was also Lukas’ first Classic win.

“We just try to do a good job every day, and hope these things fall into place,” Lukas said. “I’m only as good as Pat Day’s rides and [Young’s] broodmare band. I tried a lot of things with Cat Thief this year to try to find the key. We just couldn’t keep going out there and getting our heads kicked in. I think getting him to relax was the key. Two weeks ago, I could tell he was coming around.”

Overall, Cat Thief has won four of 19 starts--with six seconds and five thirds--and Saturday’s winner’s purse of $2.08 million boosted his total earnings to $3.4 million. He ran third in the Derby, losing to Charismatic by one length, but them bombed two weeks later when he finished seventh in the Preakness. Day, who had ridden him early in the year, bailed out on Cat Thief by the time he got to Kentucky, but hopped back on board in the Swaps.

“I said the day he won the Swaps,” Day said, “that in his earlier races he lacked desire, or intestinal fortitude, or whatever you want to call it. If he had shown the desire he showed in the Swaps in his earlier races in Florida, he would have won those.”

The first four horses across the line were 19-1, 26-1, 75-1 and 63-1. A superfecta bet, picking those four in order, was worth $692,907. The pick six, on the last six Breeders’ Cup races, was worth $3,058,137.60, the lone ticket held by G.D. Hieronymous, who shared his winnings with a reported 15 employees at the Hammond Communications Group in Lexington. Their ticket cost only $196. Tom Hammond is the host for NBC’s TV coverage of the Breeders’ Cup.

Budroyale, trying to become the first California-bred to win a Breeders’ Cup race, finished second, a head in front of Golden Missile, and Chester House, a British import running on dirt for the first time, was fourth. Cat Thief’s time for 1 1/4 miles was 1:59 2/5, the fastest Classic other than Skip Away’s 1:59 at Hollywood Park in 1997.

Cat Thief raced with the pace-setting Old Trieste early, through fractions of 23 seconds, :45 3/5 and 1:09 4/5. At the quarter pole, Old Trieste began to tire as Cat Thief moved to the front. The longshots, who were in the best positions, couldn’t catch him in the stretch, and Behrens, sluggish from the beginning, was never a threat.

“At the half-mile pole,” Day said, “Behrens ran up on us. My horse accelerated for three or four jumps. I thought he would take some beating at that point.”

Baffert lamented the fact that Gulfstream, with one exception, was a speed-favoring track all afternoon. His Classic horses, General Challenge and River Keen, finished 10th and 11th in the 14-horse field.

“All my horses ran hard,” he said. “The day was all speed. You had to be close, you had to be in the race. River Keen’s [cracked hoof] got a new patch on Friday night. There was a little bit of blood. General Challenge didn’t get out well. He was a lost soul out there.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

BREEDERS’ CUP

THE WINNERS

Winning horse, jockey in eight Breeders’ Cup races Saturday:

DISTAFF

BEAUTIFUL PLEASURE, Jorge Chavez

JUVENILE FILLIES

CASH RUN, Jerry Bailey

MILE

SILIC, Corey Nakatani

SPRINT

ARTAX, Jorge Chavez

FILLY AND MARE TURF

SOARING SOFTLY, Jerry Bailey

JUVENILE

ANEES, Gary Stevens

TURF

DAYLAMI, Lanfranco Dettori

CLASSIC

CAT THIEF, Pat Day

*

INSIDE

Silverbulletday fires a blank for trainer Bob Baffert. Page 14

NOTES, CHARTS: Pages 14-15