(Reuters) -Flightline produced one of horse racing’s all-time great performances to win the Breeders’ Cup Classic in Lexington, Kentucky on Saturday, living up to sky-high expectations and lofty comparisons to icon Secretariat.
Jockey Flavien Prat accelerated through the final turn to take the outright lead and was all by himself down the final stretch, crossing the finish in the 1-1/4-mile race some eight lengths ahead of second-place finisher Olympiad.
The Bob Baffert-trained Taiba took third.
The four-year-old bay colt was undefeated ahead of the $6 million showpiece and did not disappoint the Keeneland crowds, whose roars of approval echoed through the heart of American thoroughbred racing as Flightline cemented his status as one of the sport’s greats.
“Really a great win today. He just ran beautiful, just like we thought he could,” said trainer John Sadler in a post-race interview. “This is one of the great horses of all time.”
It was Sadler’s second Breeders’ Cup Classic win after Accelerate triumphed in 2018.
So overwhelming were the odds in Flightline’s favour that television pundits before the race wondered not whether he would win but by how many lengths after drawing the fourth post.
Prat, who won at Churchill Downs in 2019 and triumphed at the Preakness Stakes last year, produced a master performance, navigating much of the race about two lengths behind the Todd Pletcher-trained Life is Good before making his break from the outside, charging down the finish.
Olympiad and Taiba, who appeared hopelessly off the pace at the midway mark, battled into second and third as the former leader lost steam in the final moments of the race.
“Once I broke well and I was where I wanted to be, I was in control,” said Prat. “You never know what to expect in horseracing.”
Flightline entered the contest to enormous hype, winning his five previous starts by a combined 62-3/4 lengths.
He won by an astonishing 19-1/4 lengths at September’s Pacific Classic, positioning himself as the overwhelming favourite in Saturday’s prestigious dirt track race.
(Reporting by Amy Tennery in New York; editing by Jonathan Oatis/Clare Fallon/Ken Ferris)
