Attacks Hit Cup Close to Home

The 18th running of the Breeders’ Cup may come off at Belmont Park as originally scheduled, but already the eight races, worth $13 million, have been affected by last week’s terrorist attacks.

For one thing, four of the five important stakes races scheduled for Belmont Park last weekend--preps for the Oct. 27 Breeders’ Cup--were lost when track officials canceled racing cards Saturday and Sunday. Belmont Park is located on Long Island, about 20 miles east of the World Trade Center, which was destroyed when two commercial airliners were flown into its twin towers last Tuesday.

The races scuttled include stakes that would have prepped horses for the Breeders’ Cup Distaff, Juvenile and Juvenile Fillies and two of the three Breeders’ Cup grass races.

Belmont has another round of preps scheduled for Oct. 6-7, but they are different--longer--distances than the races that were canceled. What is more, some trainers may have been more comfortable with two preps rather than one going into the Breeders’ Cup. And horses on the bubble--those with marginal prospects of running in the Breeders’ Cup--are reduced to only one chance.

One of those fringe horses, an improving 4-year-old gelding named Dr. Kashnikow, was supposed to have been ridden on the grass Saturday by Gary Stevens in the $200,000 Belmont Breeders’ Cup Handicap. As it turned out, Stevens wouldn’t have been there, anyway. He was stuck in England, where the California-based jockey and his British-born wife Nikki had gone last Monday to visit her family.

“A lot of horses were going to have big [Breeders’ Cup] tryouts this weekend,” Stevens said in England, where he was a spectator as Milan won Saturday’s St. Leger at Doncaster. “Now I don’t know if they will be ready.”

Milan’s co-owner, Michael Tabor, was able to leave the rich horse auction in Lexington, Ky., and reach Doncaster in time to see his horse win the $310,000 race, but it was a struggle. Tabor didn’t land in England until several hours before the race.

D.G. Van Clief, president of the Breeders’ Cup, said in a phone interview that no plans have been set in motion to use a substitute track in the event Belmont would not be able to host the races.

“I’ve been given no reason to think that we won’t be able to run at Belmont,” Van Clief said. “I read someplace where we might have Churchill Downs ready in case Belmont wasn’t available, but we haven’t had any conversations with Churchill or any other track.”

Van Clief said that there have already been some requests for seat cancellations on Breeders’ Cup day.

“I don’t know how many, but I know there have been some,” he said. “Psychologically, this has hit all of us in some fashion. We’re still shaking off the initial shock of what happened. It’s hard to gauge how much of an impact this will have on our event. It will be days and weeks before I can have an intelligent answer to that question.”

Van Clief was also uncertain whether European participation in the races would drop off.

“It’s just too early to tell,” he said. “We’re busy with a wide range of contingency plans to make sure everything works like it usually does. We hope the horse transportation will be unhindered. We’re working with Belmont Park on stepped-up security plans.”

The Breeders’ Cup will dedicate Oct. 27 to the victims of the terrorist attacks and their families. In league with the New York Racing Assn.-which runs Belmont Park-and the National Thoroughbred Racing Assn., the Breeders’ Cup has set up a relief fund. The goal for the newly formed NTRA Charities-New York Heroes Fund is a minimum of $1 million.

Some horses that might have run last weekend in New York were unable to be flown there. Belmont officials, who had closed the track for the first three racing days after Tuesday’s attacks, didn’t cancel the weekend until Friday morning. At the time, trainer John Ward, in Kentucky, was still hoping to find a plane that would fly Beautiful Pleasure and Hero’s Tribute to New York. Beautiful Pleasure, who won the Breeders’ Cup Distaff in 1999, was to have run in last Saturday’s Ruffian Handicap. The 6-year-old mare is winless in her three starts this year and could use a confidence builder going into the Breeders’ Cup.