And then we return to pre-1984

it's a shame that 12 f is considered a marathon.

as for the new races, since this is called the breeders cup, how much input do breeders have regarding races?
and as for the differing distances, anything that would encourage breeders to look for different types of horses, rather than sprinter/milers who might carry speed 10f, has to be a good thing. right?

hey, at least the belmont won't be decried as a useless race due to it's distance. and maybe racetracks will card other races in line with the year end big day.

and maybe 'win and you're in' won't only deal with races on a certain network.

When it was THE championship race of the year, in Kelso and Buckpasser's time, it was run at 2 miles.

I hope that the Turf Sprit might be added to the Global Sprint Challenge Series-it may be too close to the leg in Japan...

Ticket prices will shoot up again for next year on the Friday. I'm sure that they had these 3 more races agreed on last year but decided to add 3 and then 3 because they knew that the swingeing ticket prices increases would be best administered in 2 doses.

As with most things in racing, this is good for owners/trainers, bad for bettors. The BC used to be the one day you could count on big fields and competitive races. Not any more. Of course, nobody cares about bettors anyway.

How it is "bad for bettors?"

The dilution of the fields argument is a tepid one at best.

Because now we get smaller fields on the one day we used to be able to count on big fields. Just like the rest of the stakes races, the talent is going to get diluted among more races, period. Less horses in a race means less competition and shorter prices. That isn't bad for bettors?

I'm not convinced of that, I think it's an assumption that won't play out. But we'll both just have to see.

I don't know about Euro attendance in 2008. Artificial surface presence expands the options for many of them, but they have to add the longer flight across country from NY. The generally-always-firm turf course is attractive to enough horses from Euro to be tempting (they don't all like ground with give in it).

What was the Euro attendence at the last left coast BC, anybody recall?

It obviously will reduce field size. There is no doubt about that. The addition of three new races this year already decreased field size.
If someone had a really top notch 2yo turf filly this year they could either take a shot against the boys in the juvenile turf OR try the dirt in the juvy fillies. Not next year. They can enter her in a BIG money 2yo turf race for fillies instead.
Saying that it won't reduce field size is nonsensical. People could disagree on how big of an impact it will have....but it will certainly have an impact.

I am not a fan of synthetic surface at major tracks, however if the 2008 BC is managed even half way decent, it should be a huge success as far as field size.

The surfaces have been around for a few years now and trainers are catching on.
In 2008 you will get all the standard BC horses , + several polytrack specialists, + extra foriegn turf horses to run on synthetic.

I don't think we will see negative effects until we move back to a dirt surface for a few years. I think a BC with a synthetic surface lowers the quality of the sport, but field size should increase.

The Classic should absolutely have a fully loaded gate in 2008. If not then someone isn't doing their job.

If the dollar doesn't recover a little, the incentive for horses from across the pond to come over is diminished. Some will certainly still do it (as they did this year) but probably not as many as in past years.

Yes, that will have an impact. The owners always have to weigh which races they ship to and consider things like economics, bloodstock, prestige...
Some of these outfits seem to ship a couple horses over and participate each year.

Horsemen have always planned for big target days. The days of choice have simply changed.

When exactly did best return on investment shift from racetrack earnings to stallion earnings - the mid-1980's? I'd like to go back and look at the PP's of most of the horses who have run in the Breeder's Cup races since inception, to see how significant a change has (or has not?) occured in race frequency leading up to a big race.

Didn't the Juvenile races all vastly oversubscribe this year? I am sure that was a major factor in the decision to add the juvenile fillies turf race. So now instead of 22 entries in the juvenile turf we will only get 16. Either way we will wind up with a full field.

2007 Friday:
F & M sprint - 10 entries - 14 allowed
Juv turf 1 mile - 12 entries - 12 allowed
Dirt mile - 9 entries - 14 allowed

2007 Saturday:
Juv Fillies - 14 entries - 14 allowed
Juv colts - 13 - 14 allowed
F & M turf - 12 entires - 14 allowed
Sprint - 11 entries - 14 allowed
Mile - 14 entries - 14 allowed
Distaff - 12 entries - 14 allowed
Turf - 8 entries - 14 allowed
Classic - 9 entries - 14 allowed

Here's the 2007 lists, including nominations under the Division click http://www.breederscup.com/content.aspx?id=28964

Who clearly moved from Saturday to Friday at time of entry? Seriously, let's figure it out to see how fields were affected by adding Friday.

Just La Traviata and she'd probably be crippled right now if she'd have tried to take on the boys.

well start breeding them again for the longer distances. and then they should have better horses to run in it then claimers.

Easiest way is to look at the entries for the three Friday divisions (cannot cut and paste it off the website, sorry) - and see what horses more properly belonged in a Saturday race.

If they didn't really belong in Saturday, then they were right to enter on Friday.

I'm willing to wager that at least 3/4s of the field in the BC Dirt Marathon next year are either stakes winners or G1 placed.