Breeders’ Cup Memories: 2013 Breeders’ Cup Marathon

[Wandering Eyes]

I miss the Breeders’ Cup Marathon. The race, first run in 2008, only lasted for six years before its relegation to the under-card as the Marathon S., the reason for its demotion being that the fields which it was attracting were not up the standard expected of the Breeders’ Cup. Why it did not attract better horses is anyone’s guess. It was a valuable race ($500,000) and there are plenty of smart stayers around, in Europe, anyway, if not the USA. Predictably its first two winners were European-trained.  Muhannak (Ire) (Chester House) took the first edition for Ralph Beckett, while Aidan O’Brien landed the second renewal with Rags To Riches’s half-brother Man Of Iron (Giant’s Causeway).  Disappointingly, the victories of those horses did little to inspire increased European participation, and it was another four years before another transatlantic raider took the prize.

The identity of Europe’s third winner of the BC Marathon probably sealed the race’s fate. London Bridge (Arch) had changed hands for $130,000 as a yearling at Keeneland in September 2011 before finding his way to the Lambourn (GB) stable of Mikael Magnusson, for whom he had one unplaced run as a 2-year-old. On Magnusson’s retirement, London Bridge stayed within Lambourn, moving to the small stable of Jo Hughes. Two more unplaced maiden-race runs saw him enter the BHA ratings’ list on the lowly mark of 64. After handicap wins at Brighton, Sandown and Ripon, a third place in a handicap at Ascot and a fourth place in the Prix Michel Houyvet at Deauville, London Bridge was sold to Australian owner Paul Fudge (of Waratah Thoroughbreds) who decided that his final run for Hughes would be in the Breeders’ Cup Marathon (video) before joining a local stable.

The likelihood is that when Jo Hughes dispatched London Bridge on his journey to the USA, she was not expecting the horse to win. Certainly, she did not think it worth her while to fly over to Santa Anita. Instead, she was treating her staff to a Saturday-evening meal in an Indian restaurant in Swindon when the race was run. Fortunately, it was a restaurant with a television–which enabled her to watch the action live as Mike Smith brought London Bridge home a surprise winner, instantly elevating Hughes into the elite band of UK-based Breeders’ Cup winners and giving hope to numerous battling trainers in the process.

London Bridge, incidentally, never won again and eventually found his way to Carrington Park Stud in New South Wales, where he started out at a stud fee of A$4,500 + GST.

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