{"id":329,"date":"2007-10-27T19:59:23","date_gmt":"2007-10-28T00:59:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sallyharrison.com\/?p=329"},"modified":"2007-10-28T09:16:39","modified_gmt":"2007-10-28T14:16:39","slug":"curlin-crowned-in-breeders-cup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sallyharrison.com\/?p=329","title":{"rendered":"Curlin crowned in Breeders’ Cup"},"content":{"rendered":"

Curlin (pictured earlier this year), who broke his maiden in his debut back on February 3, sealed his bid for Horse of the Year honors with a decisive win in the $5 million Breeders’ Cup Classic at Monmouth Park Saturday. It was his sixth victory from nine starts this year. He is only the third Preakness Stakes winner<\/a> to take the Breeders’ Cup Classic. Ridden by Robby Albarado, he took the lead coming out of the final turn and left Hard Spun 4 1\/2 lengths back, followed by longshot Awesome Gem and Kentucky Derby winner Street Sense, the 5-2 favorite.<\/p>\n

Trainer Steve Asmussen said that he considered Curlin’s grueling Triple Crown quest – with wins in the Rebel Stakes, Arkansas Derby, a third in the Kentucky Derby, a win in the Preakness and a second in the Belmont – as the horse’s two-year-old season. After two months off, he came back for third in the Haskell Invitational at Monmouth, and then won Belmont’s Jockey Club Gold Cup.<\/p>\n

“He’s a special horse to accomplish what he has accomplished in the length of time he had to get to this level,” Asmussen said.<\/p>\n

Both Asmussen and Albarado were notching up their first wins in the Breeders’ Cup Classic, on Thoroughbred racing’s richest day.<\/p>\n

Unofficial wagering on the 11 Breeders’ Cup races was $111,903,685, down 20% from the all-time record set last year at Churchill Downs. The decline followed five consecutive years of increases. Severe weather, which kept on-track crowds down to 41,000, may have also been a factor in the wagering decline.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Curlin (pictured earlier this year), who broke his maiden in his debut back on February…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-racing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sallyharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sallyharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sallyharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sallyharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sallyharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sallyharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sallyharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sallyharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sallyharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}