In a misguided effort to draw celebrities to the track and make it seem like a bigger event, the Breeders Cup has decided to hold the event both this year and next year at Santa Anita.  In the shadow of the San Gabriel Mountains, Santa Anita is gorgeous, but from a sporting perspective, there’s a problem.

Santa Anita has a lovely turf course, but they run what would traditionally be dirt races on the synthetic ProRide surface.  A lot of horses who do well on dirt don’t take to synthetic tracks, so if you’ve got a horse in it’s prime that does well on dirt but not on the fake stuff,  tough luck for you. For the next two years your championship hopes are eclipsed so that horse fans and television viewers can bask in the glory reflected from the likes of Tom Arnold, Jamie-Lynn Sigler, Gabrielle Union, Michael Clark Duncan, and Freddie Rodriguez.  (No, I don’t know who most of them are either, but the San Diego Times-Union tells us they’re famous).

Another way they’ve messed with the Cup is adding a number of divisions. Are there that many horses itching to go longer than a mile and a quarter that a dirt marathon (or in this instance, a non-dirt marathon) is necessary?

Friday is now “Ladies Day” and after a quarter-century of being known as the Distaff the sport’s premier race for older fillies and mares is now going to be known as the “Ladies Classic”.   Apparently this will draw huge throngs of fans to the sport who can’t be bothered to take 10 seconds to learn that “distaff” has traditionally been a term for races for fillies and mares.

I guess that something needs to be done to get some traction in the sports world on a football weekend. But the Cup is such a great event, why dilute it with these changes?

Now none of this means that there aren’t some great betting opportunities.  A lot of quality horses means that some of those quality horses go off at great prices.  There will be horses that figure prominently that pay boxcar mutuels when they win and with full fields, the exactas can be huge.  When I last checked a couple of years ago a win bet on every single Breeders Cup horse in history was still returning slight profits.  Yep, the number of longshots that win overcome the takeout.

My horse handicapper Dan Branham has been blistering hot in graded stakes action all year and if you want to subscribe to his selections for the weekend call my office at 770-649-1078.  Friday’s first race goes at 3:35PM Eastern Time.