There's been much debate about Contrary Thinking's presence as a "rabbit" in the $7 million Breeders' Cup Classic (G1), but owner Peter Brant doesn't understand all the fuss.
"We've been getting pressure about running a pacemaker but pacemakers have been in racing forever. Sometimes they win races," Brant said. "It's important to have pace or the field gets too close together and a lot of things can happen. In Europe they run pacemakers all the time and they do it here."
The furor over Contrary Thinking's running to carve out fast fractions for his Chad Brown-trained stablemate Sierra Leone reached its apex in the Aug. 31 Jockey Club Gold Cup Stakes (G1) at Saratoga Race Course.
Four weeks earlier in the Whitney Stakes (G1), in his first start for Brant, Contrary Thinking was sent off at 70-1 but did his job in the 1 1/8-mile test as he pressed the pace and paved the way for 2024 Breeders' Cup Classic winner Sierra Leone to rally from ninth and prevail by a length. In that race, Contrary Thinking was a head behind 53-1 longshot Mama's Gold after a half-mile in :47.07 before fading to last.
But in the mile-and-a-quarter Jockey Club Gold Cup, where Sierra Leone was a 6-5 favorite for owners Brant, the Coolmore partners, Westerberg, and Brook Smith, there was a scary crowding incident shortly after start that led to jockey Irad Ortiz Jr. being knocked off Repole Stable and St. Elias Stables' Mindframe .
Contrary Thinking led by 7 lengths after a half-mile in :46.96 and once again was last across the finish.
While the incident was caused by jockey Kendrick Carmouche on Phileas Fogg coming over a few paths in order to grab the lead over Contrary Thinking, after the race Mike Repole blamed the incident not so much on Carmouche—who was suspended for five days after Phileas Fogg was disqualified and placed last—as the presence of a "rabbit" in the field.
Now with Contrary Thinking entered along with Sierra Leone and Repole's duo of Mindframe and Fierceness in the grand Nov. 1 showdown in the Breeders' Cup Classic, the debate has been rekindled about the presence of a rabbit who could go off at 100-1 in the year's richest United States race.
"The last race had nothing to do with Chad's pacemaker," Brant said about the Jockey Club Gold Cup. "It was the kind of riding in which I am surprised (Carmouche) got as few days as he did. What he did was very dangerous.
"He was trying to intimidate our horse and get the lead, but he came in at such a sharp angle that he caused contact. It could have been like dominoes and been a very, very serious accident."
As a comparison, Fierceness was a length behind a :44.96 half-mile and finished second to Sierra Leone by 1 1/2 lengths last year in the mile-and-a-quarter Classic.
"It's part of the game. You have to be flexible. There's no rules in the game about pacemakers. There's no right way to do things. The only problem I have with this pacemaker is that he's not that good," said Brant, who bought the son of Into Mischief from fellow Brown owner Klaravich Stables after a June 29 front-running allowance win. "Chad makes the call on whether the pacemaker is in or not. Chad made the decision to get the pacemaker. He was a horse I never would have bought. Chad probably thought he was better because we bought him off a win and he did win nicely before we bought him.
"I think there's other speed. But he deserves to be in there. He's not in there to get the lead. He's there to make sure the first part is not held down to a gallop."
Brown extolled the virtues of having a pacemaker to prevent a field from becoming bunched.
"I'd like to ask gamblers from their standpoint: in a slow-paced race where the horses are all bunched up and one or two horses have an advantage over everyone, is that a better race to wager on? Or a race with an honest and fair pace and more horses have a chance to win? That's a fair question," Brown said. "As far as pacemakers go, the last time I put Florent Geroux on a pacemaker last year the horse (Idea Generation) won in the Flower Bowl. I won the (2018) United Nations with a horse named Funtastic. He was in there to set the pace and he went all the way.
"I've actually won big races with (pacemakers) in there. I give fair and honest instructions, saying, 'Look, go to the front, set an honest pace, and if you think you can win, go for it.' And those two times the horses actually won. That will not be different in this race. Those will be my instructions."
The California Horse Racing Board has a regulation (CHRB 1692) in its requirements for horses, trainers, and jockeys stipulating that each horse starting in a race must be qualified for that race, ready to run, in physical condition to exert its best effort, and entered with the intention to win. CHRB executive director Scott Chaney said he believed Contrary Thinking's entry qualified because of how the rule has been applied over the years.
"Based on history, they've applied that rule fairly liberally. In talking with the stewards, the rule has always been used, and maybe even intended to apply, to determining if the horse is fit enough to win, and not necessarily if it's good enough to win the race," Chaney said. "Under the rule they're looking to make sure the horse has the requisite past performances and work pattern that it can actually compete successfully in the race."
Chaney said trying to determine if a horse meets the standard of "an intention to win" could be a slippery slope. He noted that sometimes horses are entered where the trainer might think the runner does not have a reasonable chance to win but the owner very much wants to run.
"An argument could be made that those types of horses are not necessarily entered with the intention of winning, at least as the trainer sees it, but the owner very much wants to run," Chaney said. "So I think given all of those factors, they just determined that the horse would be allowed to run on Saturday."
Additional reporting by Frank Angst and Byron King
