Breeders' Cup Classic

John Sadler, a well-respected trainer whose West Coast operation had produced one victory after another but chad ome up painfully empty in the Breeders’ Cup World Championships, broke through in a big way at Churchill Downs on Nov. 3.

Favored Accelerate ended Sadler’s 0-fer on this international stage when he held off surging Gunnevera by one length in the $6 million Breeders’ Cup Classic. Thunder Snow finished another three-quarters of a length back in third.

“We got the big one,” Sadler said, “so it was a really good day.”

Sadler was winless with 44 Breeders’ Cup starters, including two attempts in the Classic, before Hronis Racing's Accelerate ended his woes by winning for the sixth time in seven tries this season.

Some alarms might have gone off for those who have watched Sadler struggle in the Cup when the 5-year-old son of Lookin At Lucky was reluctant to load.

But Accelerate was all business when it counted to climax a huge weekend for Joel Rosario, his jockey. Rosario delivered aboard Jaywalk in the Tito’s Handmade Vodka Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies and the Sentient Jet Breeders’ Cup Juvenile on Game Winner on Nov. 2 before taking down the biggest prize of all a day later.

Rosario worked for it, all right. He noted that Accelerate, for all of his success, can be a challenging mount.

“He is the kind of horse you’ve got to ride him the whole way,” he said.

Even when Accelerate made the lead, it was not over. “He waited a little bit on horses,” Rosario said.

In the end, though, Accelerate earned his fifth Grade 1 triumph of the season, tacking the Classic onto previous successes in the Santa Anita Handicap, the Gold Cup at Santa Anita, the TVG Pacific Classic and the Awesome Again Stakes.

Accelerate’s body of work – and the exclamation point he attached to the end of it – may stir Horse of the Year debate even in a season in which undefeated Justify swept the Triple Crown before he was retired at the end of July due to inflammation in one of his ankles.