Breeders' Cup Marathon gains graded status · 30.12.09

Better late than never, we should note that on 3 December the American Graded Stakes Committee announced that the Breeders’ Cup Marathon would be granted graded status for the first time. Assuming that the race is even held in 2010, the Marathon will be rated as a Grade III.

For the purposes of the Unofficial Champion Stayers’ Award the Marathon had been provisionally ranked as a Grade I — on the theory that it, as part of the Breeders’ Cup “World Championships” programme, attracts the best available horses. However, that theory seems to have gone by the boards, as two other BC races — the Juvenile Fillies Turf and the Turf Sprint, were only granted Grade II status. It appears that the AGSC focussed on the perceived quality of the horses being entered, rather than at the “World Championship” status claimed by the Breeders’ Cup.

The Unofficial Champion Stayers’ Award for 2010 will naturally incorporate the decision of the AGSC regarding the Marathon’s Grade III status into its points and ranking systems. Hopefully the upgrade will serve to attract more well-regarded horses to the race, and eventually cause the Committee to grant the Marathon Grade II or even Grade I status. The concurrent promotion of Del Mar’s Cougar II Handicap — one of the recently-created prep races for the Marathon — to Grade III might also contribute to this.

Will this cause the 2008 and 2009 Stayers’ Award results to be skewed, as those results incorporated a provisional Grade I ranking for the Marathon that subsequently cannot be seen as justified? Perhaps, but certainly not significantly, and I don’t intend to adjust them at this time. Champs Elysees, the 2008 winner, earned no points from that race. Cloudy’s Knight, the leading stayer for 2009, earned six points for his close second-place in this year’s quasi-Grade I Marathon — however, he would have still earned two points from a Grade III race, which would still put him comfortably ahead of any other horse in the rankings. So, arguably, no such adjustments are needed.

The only thing that might be changed for the 2010 Stayers’ Award is the policy to award the same points for ungraded races as for Grade IIIs — 4/2/1 for win/place/show. The Cougar II’s new Grade III status arguably weakens the original rationale for that policy: that ungraded stakes races seen as Breeders’ Cup preps would tend to attract higher-class horses than such races normally would, and that this should be reflected in the points system. The question of how to re-jig the points system to reflect the new paradigm needs to be considered.

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